How many battery bars do you usually have?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(PriusOwner004 @ Aug 18 2007, 08:12 PM) [snapback]498529[/snapback]</div>

I usually have 6 bars, but if I have the A/C on AND do lots of hill climbing or get stuck at l-o-n-g lights in rush hour, then it goes down to 3 or 4 bars. Don't put your car in neutral...there is nothing charging the battery at that time, and it's illegal to drive in neutral in many states.

 

Absolutely do not drive in neutral. At the other poster said....It will not charge. I will copy and paste my beginners post for your info. Scroll down to the part about Glide. I recommend you read all of what is here but read about gliding so you can do it properly.

Required reading.... go to this link and read about Prius power flow
http://priuschat.com/Introduction-to-Prius...low-t30286.html
The state of charge on the traction(HV) battery is controlled by a battery computer. The visible part of the battery you see is 40%-80%. The batt computer wants to keep the HV battery at 60%(5-6 blue bars) all the time. This is to maximize the life of the battery.
It is very hard to get your battery to 8 green bars unless you already have 6 blue bars and you go down a hill at approx 6% grade or better for about 3-4 miles(coasting preferrably). After this if you keep driving on a flat surface the car uses the excess energy to run MG2 to help power the car to draw the HV battery back down to 6 blue bars(approx 60%). If you have all greens all the time then the car has no place to store excess energy and must burn it up as heat to the environment through the MG's. The HV battery is what starts your ICE(gas engine).
Read the 5 stages of operation here(click on the HERE link in the first post):
http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=4...amp;hl=5+Stages

Ahhh. Blocking the upper grill. I blocked my upper grill for summertime but not the lower. It forces the ICE to operate at slightly higher temps which makes it more efficient. The efficiency I speak of is due to the coolant circulating through the throttle body to pre heat the fuel. The fans will still operate as necessary to keep your engine cool enough. Part of the efficiency is due to the engine staying warmer for longer and not needing to start as often to maintain temp. The other part of blocking the grill is to keep the heat in while preheating your vehicle with a Engine Block Heater (EBH). I do not recommend blocking the grill unless you have the scanguage II to monitor engine coolant temps. Blocking the lower grill during extreme cold months will also give greater FE. If you can not keep up with the lingo then you need to read this:
http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=1...l=abbreviations
hope all of this helps. Read often and tell other drivers about this site.....very informative.

When people say "Pulse & Glide" most people think push the accelerator then coast to recharge the battery......
This is not the true intent of pulse and glide. It takes some skill to do this properly.

1. PULSE Only pulse up to 40 MPH or below because at 41MPH the ICE will continue to run at 960 rpm even though the engine icon on your energy screen is not pink( lit up) to prevent MG1 from overspeeding. Yes I have the scanguageII and I have watched it countless times. It may spin but there is no way to tell if it is getting spark and sending fuel to the engine...just increased drag from the water pump on the belt, resistance on the crank and resistance from the pistons. If I am on a flat surface and doing P&G and get 41 mph by mistake then the ICE will not shut off(0rpm) until I reach about 37-38 mph so that is a few more seconds before the ICE stops spinning. To prevent exceeding 40 mph on a down hill slope, do not pulse up to 40...make it less based on how steep/long the hill is. I like to use regen to slow down if I know the rest of the down hill will take me where I want to go without more acceleration. While on this note I will say that above 45 MPH the wind drag is much higher and gets increasingly intense the faster you are above this speed(not linear). To test this get up to 45 mph on a flat surface and let off the accelerator. Time how many seconds it is to get down to 30 mph. Now do this for any speed above 45. Try 55 or 60 and wait till there is a 15 mph difference. Less than 45 the time is longer and therefore more fuel saved.

2. GLIDE. This is the point that you take your foot off of the pedal to force the ICE to shut off. Read the 5 stages of operation and click on the here link to help you facilitate when the ICE will and will not shut off based on what STAGE it is in http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=4...amp;hl=5+Stages After you remove your foot from the accelerator you then must reengage the accelerator ever so slightly while watching the energy screen to observe a NO ARROWS CONDITION(not regenerating AND not providing propulsion...no green or yellow arrows). You might be thinking by now.....why is this so in depth??? It takes some SKILL, slight of foot or feather foot to accomplish this. You can not be eating, conversing on the phone and any other things while trying to stay in a P&G mode(unless you are highly skilled). It clearly takes some skill and knowledge to do this correctly. I am trying to provide you the knowledge and pass on the info I have for this. From now on when having a conversation about P&G you can pass the MPH threshold and No arrows conditions on so others know. When someone says glide in the future this is what comes to mind each time.

3 Do it all over again...try to watch for traffic lights and anticipate them so you can Glide. If you have a down hill ride home like I do for an entire mile prior to your drive way then you will master the downhill glide for battery recharge vs. no arrows glide condition. Good luck with this and keep us posted. If you feel this info is particularly useful and you have more input I will edit my post to accomodate your thoughts. Please advise through PM or click on my name and email me direct and please copy and paste the URL as I have many post so far on multiple threads.
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<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(PriusOwner004 @ Aug 19 2007, 01:12 PM) [snapback]498529[/snapback]</div>

When I first got the car, I always seemed to have 6 blue bars or 7 or 8 green bars. I had been reading here how a lot of people were getting down to the 2 bar level, and for the life of me, I could not see how they had managed that. I have had the climate control (A/C for those who insist on calling it that) on ever since I drove off the dealer's lot.

Now I have to say that Sydney is a very hilly place, especially around where I live. Our hills may not be as high as San Francisco's, but we sure have a lot of them, and it seems that we are always either going up or down a hill - there are just not that many flat spots. The best I have encountered is a stretch about 3Km long, and even there, there are slight rises and dips. I need to drive approx 30 Km west before I start running on reasonably flat roads. All of this means that I am doing a lot of coasting down hill regenerating all the time, while uphills always need the ICE.

I am slowly getting used to P&G on the available flat roads, and have even found that on some roads, provided that there is not much traffic, I can get over some of the rises just on electric power. When this happens, the bars often get down to 3 or 4. Still have not been below 3 bars yet.

One thing that I did notice though - I had left the car in the sun for a couple of hours last week (temp 24C - and still winter), then drove off in EV mode. The climate control was blowing a gale trying to cool the interior down, and the bars were dropping almost as I was watching them. I drove a full 1 Km, only at a speed of 20 kph which was the speed limit (retired residential area) before I hit a hill and had to kick in the ICE, but in that distance, the bars had dropped from 6 down to 4, and had dropped to 3 a further 1 Km up the road. Previously, when the climate control is just running, this same trip hardly impacts on the number of bars.

Just shows what an impact the climate control can have on the mpg, because unless you have a nice long hill to use to regenerate, you are going to need the ICE.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(PriusOwner004 @ Aug 19 2007, 12:24 AM) [snapback]498553[/snapback]</div>

http://priuschat.com/Acronyms-and-Abbrevia...ary-t13051.html