First time owner. Is this normal?

Normal. Its not much of an ev only car.

The key factors when normal are the battery charges most of the way only when driving. It will not fully charge while motionless in Ready. Second a good high voltage battery will allow the engine to stop at lights without forcing it to start.

Hybrid AC compressors run on high voltage battery power which gives you ac when in Ready regardless if the engine is running. However it will discharge the battery fairly quickly if not moving, forcing the engine on. But normally not at a traffic light if the battery has good capacity.

 

How many miles on the car? Sounds like your hybrid battery has lost its capacity and you can restore capacity through doing three successively deeper discharges and recharges with a high voltage trickle charger and some light bulbs for the discharge. You can build this gear yourself, or buy an adjustable DC power supply that can do 250volts and 1/3rd amp. Or buy a Prolong or Maxx Volt products.

Or just upgrade to a new Sodium-Ion pack to get better all round performance than even when the car was brand new.

Also if you let us know where in the US you live, someone on here might live near you and can do the work for you.

 

welcome!
sounds normal for an old prius

 

Have you driven any Prius before? Sometimes people come to the car with distorted expectations.

The car has a small battery, which is enough to recover a little energy that would otherwise be wasted in some circumstances, and give the engine a little extra boost in other circumstances, and do little of either, most of the time.

The car's most efficient operation is when it is doing little of either. The efficiency of capturing energy into the battery and getting it back out is better than older cars just wasting it, but not better than just getting the right amount of power from the engine in real time and using that.

So that's what the car does—most of the time.

A big part of the car's efficiency just comes from being able to use a smaller engine with a more-efficient combustion cycle, so it is right-sized for most of your driving, and a brief boost from the battery comes in at those higher-demand moments that most cars have to upsize their engines for.

 

A Prime is a plug in hybrid designed to drive 20-50 miles at highway speeds on battery alone. It has a much bigger battery. You have a standard hybrid that "might" ev a mile on flat land at 25 mph. It is specifically designed not to fully discharge the hybrid battery in an effort to make it last ten years.

 

I played with that too when I got my first Prius. I guess most people can't help having to try it out. For me the distance could be a city block or three, on flat ground at a low speed.

Eventually you get over wanting to play like that.

Even if you could cover the distance without having to kick in the gas engine, you're better off having it kick in, because that's when the (non-Prime) car's most efficient.

 

if you are cruising along, and let off the gas, the engine doesn't shut down?

you may not be using a prius aware scanner for the trouble codes

 

Your car was running on EV mode for 5 mins with the AC running. That's not bad. Instead you shouldn't situate yourself for 5 mins. Just run and go so you can maximize mpg and EV mode. If you turn off the AC you should still get a good mile or more of EV mode (below 25mph) if the bars are full. At 1/3 full your engine will struggle the whole time trying to power the AC and trying to charge the HV battery and trying to power EV motor all at the same time from a tiny 1.3kwh battery. Tesla has 60kwh+ battery. That's a big difference.

Also in PWR and EV mode below 25mph you will experience more EV mode and better regen braking.

 

Actually you don't want to stay on EV mode for too long. Draining the HV battery will get you back to the same situation of running mostly on gas engine again. The best is when the HV battery operates between that 60-80% range to get the best of both worlds. AC will drain it but if you have to use it then you have to use it. Also consider fresh air vs recirculated since fresh air cools the HV batteries better over the life the car. More cooler fresh air passing through the HV battery modules is a good thing.