How many battery bars are supposed to be displayed?

All those readings are normal. You should not see green unless you are going down hill, and you should not see purple bars unless going up hill with A/C on. Otherwise, 5-6 blue bars is where the system tries to maintain the SOC.

 

^^^
I wouldn't say the above is totally right. I sometimes see green in normal operation, but seeing it green w/all bars filled shouldn't happen unless you're going down/braking down a hill.

As for purple or down to 1 bar, that can also happen w/very prolonged stop and go, esp. w/the AC on.

Also, to the OP, the range represented is NOT 0 to 100%, see Prius Palm Mileage Simulator

 

It might also be helpful to mention that variation is good. If the battery level never changed there would be no point in having one. Think of the battery like a shock absorber, it goes up and down to even out the energy usage from the ICE, and it tries to return to a point around the blue/green boundary when there are no 'bumps'.

 

Totally normal. The system generally tries to keep the battery at about 6 blue bars, that's pretty much optimal for regular driving.

If your battery spends most of it's time in the range of 5 to 7 bars that's pretty much ideal for battery health.

 

I parked my 08 last night 6 blue bars. This am I had two purple bars. Never saw purple before and nothing was left on overnight. ( that I could find anyway.)

 

Yeah, that shouldn't normally happen unless the battery pack is unhealthy. If it happens regularly then it's definitely a sign of something wrong. Some people notice it as a "one off" or very rarely and don't seem to have any major problems. Sometimes I think it can be just an observational error too.

 

I have only had the car for a couple of months. 87000 mi. on it.
I had never seen the TBI show less the 5 bars before this incident.
I did have the AC on yesterday to try it out. But, It was turned off before I pulled it in the garage.
It recovered to 6 or 7 bars in 3 mi. and was in the green when I returned home.

 

You'll see green all the time. 7 bars of green. If you drive the car without a thought of hypermiling (my wife) the car will be constantly in green.

Now if you look closely when in green there's a tiny space left for the elusive 8th bar. That's the green bar usually only attained by going down a long hill being in constant regen. The one your referring too. I have never seen 8 bars blue as my car has never seen a hill here in Florida.
But I see 7 bars green all the time. Its normal. Your just not modulating the pedal properly and usually indicates a heavy traffic pattern. Constant on/off of pedal. Most new owners of a Prius should see green all the time till they figure the tricks out. VERY normal.

Very easy to see purple bars. Just sit in a drive through waiting on your food order, in the heat, with the ac on and radio on, and headlights on. You'll flag the hybrid real fast. No big deal your back in blue bars in 2 blocks.

Now...referring to the OP's post about overnight drain of the hybrid pack that is a classic symptom of a bad 12 volt battery. Mine started doing that in addition to throwing a red exclamation point momentarily at start up. This point does not log a DTC btw, its just an alert. Its the car detecting the 12 volt is dipping below 11.2 upon boot up.
Btw, there is no overnight drain on the hybrid pack. The hybrid pack is disconnected form load when the car is not ready. Its just an instantaneous load on the hybrid pack to charge the flagged 12 volt and it drains the hybrid pack really fast. Do this test on the 12 and post the load number. I expect it to be 11.4 or less. Time for a new battery:

Weird stuff happening? MPGs dropping? Test The Battery | PriusChat

 

And being in the green is a bad thing. Its not healthy for the battery as the battery will be warmed up. And means you do not know how to drive the car to get the most out of its capability. It means you spend an inordinate amount of time in regen usually because you are driving the car like a normal car...pedal engaged...pedal off...pedal engaged..pedal off. Instead of looking ahead and keeping the pedal slightly engaged enough to not invoke regen.
That difference is worth about 8 mpg's. My wife drives it like that and gets 44 always in the green. I drive it correctly and get 53. And never in the green.

You'll get it. Most important thing to learn is gas pedal management. Feather the pedal and do not invoke regen if at all possible. Regen sucks as it slow's the car down and you have to spend gas to get back up to speed. There's that 8 mpg's.

Good Luck.!

 

thanks for the reply.

 

You're spot on with that one Ed. You can easily see 7 bars just by accelerating and braking, rinse and repeat. My wife drives like that too.

This claim is a bit more dubious however. You can get the 7th bar with as little as about 65% SOC, which is well less than that required to cause the battery any harm.

Even the top of the 8th bar is only about 80% SOC, which is supposed to be ok for the battery. However with an older battery and some capacity loss the Coulomb counting can be out, so I agree that regularly seeing 8 green bars could be less than ideal for battery health. If possible you should avoid parking in direct sun on very hot days with all 8 bars SOC. I've personally had a bad experience doing exactly this.

 

All the foregoing says what car guys have said lo these many years: YMMV. There is little to no flat terrain here, so I admit my ignorance of those conditions.

 

Yep in all honesty you'd mostly be right. I'd say 95% of the time that I get green bars it's from going downhill. Just saying however, you can still get 7 green bars from aggressive stop start driving too.