EV vs Hybrid Dashboard Indicator and can I force battery use

Wow. Lots of possibilities there. If it's very cold and you call for heat. If you hit the defroster button. There are others listed in your manual.

"Mpg" sounds more like fuel economy than EV range. If you meant "miles" rather than "mpg," it may simply be that it's colder this year or that traffic is making you drive a little less economically. Range is not a good metric for battery capacity, though. How many kWh does it take to charge now compared to a year ago? That's how you measure capacity.

Or it may well be that this is why your range is less. Bad idea to keep it fully charged up long term. See the owner's manual.

Any mode you like. Just don't keep it fully charged. The modes are there to give you some control over your driving experience, not to protect or abuse the battery.

You are absolutely right, there!! It pays to do your research before going in so you don't fall for any malarkey.

 

Like @jerrymildred commented, it has been record breaking cold Nov in history in many areas. It may simply because you had to run more heat this fall compared to last year. I would not worry too much.

 

If you manually switch to HV for hills and any hard acceleration, you will dramatically improve your overall efficiency. Both your MPG and miles/kWh will increase substantially. It takes a little trial and error to dial in the technique for your particular conditions. I would start by using HV for any acceleration that would require going beyond about halfway up the scale on the MID.

In my pipe dreams it would be possible to configure EV Auto with a customized switch point based on engine load (maybe vacuum for ICE and power for EV). Then users could dial in the optimum settings for their conditions.

 

From my perspective in EV mode, if the car behaves nicely, just drive it.
If you want to get more EV miles, you have to put in the time to learn how to get more EV miles.
27 ti 28 compared to 23 to 25 is not that big of a difference. Weather, traffic patterns, driving style all effect MP(e).

 

In nice weather Yes, but below freezing there are other considerations. The big one is warmup mode.
Once the car is warmed up than switching modes can produce a benefit. Warnup is a bear though.

 

In my experience, switching HV/EV manually to increase MPG works only if you have substantially longer trip than the your normal EV range. Say for normal 30 miles EV range, if the trip is only 35 miles, switching HV/EV manually does not result in higher mpg. On the contrary it often lower the overall mpg. Yes, your overall EV range will increase as shown in daily miles/kWh or miles on GOM, but for OP's situation of "Our daily trip into town runs out of EV about 5km from home and it switches to ICE." my feeling is that manually switching HV/EV will cause more gas usage (i.e. lower mpg).

 

At any specific ambient temp, time warmup mode (until the ICE shuts off automatically while in park)
Take about half that time (guessing while driving) and switch from EV to HV mode before you run out of EV range.
See if that helps?

 

I've come to the same conclusion. Several times a month we need to go to a place that's a 40 mile round trip and we stay there at least two hours. The last two times, I just stayed on EV till it ran out on the way home. That gave me a roughly 10-mile stretch in HV, which is just one warm-up cycle for the ICE. If I warmed up going and coming, it would certainly take a mileage hit.

 

Are you suggesting if the warmup takes 4 min on parking, switch from EV to HV 2 min before running out out of EV range? Are you saying that will increase mpg? I essentially do that for my regular summer commute most of the time. My commute is 36 miles. My summer time normal EV range is ~34-35 miles. I often run out of EV range only a few miles before reaching home, resulting in my mpg still at 199.9mpg. But this often cause the car to be still in the warm-up cycle when I park my car at home. Since I don't like shutting down the engine while still in warm-up cycle, I usually switch to HV mode ahead of time to complete warm up cycle and drive HV on acceleration and uphill portion of my commute, saving some EV range when I get home. With this practice, I can get better miles/kWh, but my mpg is less than 199.9mpg.

IMHO, 40 miles is too short to get any benefit of manual HV switching to improve both EV range and HV mpg in your weather. The best distance that works for manual HV/EV switch is 80-100miles trip for warm weather. Essentially 2-3 times distance of normal EV range. However, for our cold winter when normal EV range diminishes to about 20 miles, even less than 40 miles trips may benefit from manual HV/EV switch. I am currently testing this on my daily 36 miles commute. Even if it dose not improve overall mpg, I am benefiting more comfortable heat provided by ICE.

 

If I'm understanding correctly, and in my opinion (( using HV to accelerate and on uphill climbs, is counteractive,) at least until warmup is complete). Than use HV whenever you think it will help get your desired results.
Fair weather driving the Prime can produce different results than driving it in ambient temps below freezing,

 

Totally agree. On longer trips I switch back and forth a good bit, saving EV for lower speeds.

 

I am not using HV on accelerate and on uphill climbs while engine is warming up, that is essentially using the traction battery to do the acceleration and uphill. I start HV well in advance of that to complete the warm-up. In fact I usually complete the warm-up while parking if time allows, and try to mix HV/EV during my ~18 miles drive so that the engine will not cool down to the point that I have to go through the warm-up cycle again until I reach my final destination.