Insignificant EV button "discovery"

Tony that was probably me. I mentioned it in my ice fishing blurb.

For what it's worth I vastly exceeded the 34 mph "limit" the other day coming back down out of the mountains. I put the car in EV mod because we were in stop and go traffic coming down I-70 East. At one point the traffic broke loose and I was able to coast, still in EV mode, to speeds near or just above 50 mph. I never got the tripple beep. It is confusing though, because when the battery is green, it seems like you can accelerate much harder when you're not in EV mode but still only draw power from the battery. Basically, if you're in the green it seems that the car behaves as if you're in EV mode.

 

So you are saying that if the state of charge is high (green bars) then the EV mode will allow you to go above 34mph?
Can someone confirm this please?
This is very interesting and I'd love to know if it is so, I might have to go and find a big hill.

 

Thats what I thought. I tried it today, when the battery bars turned green I went into EV mode and attempted to go higher and definitely no go, the ICE started every time. I have noticed that the car will 'coast' (with very light throttle push) showing only battery power to the wheels, I have seen this at up to 66mph, but I assume the ICE is still spinning in a 'no burn' scenario.
Something else I noticed, our speedos here (Australia) are in km/h so the upper limit for EV use should be 54.71km/h (34mph * 1.609344 = 54.71kph) but in EV mode the ICE starts at 45kmh every time.
This is a bit dissapointing. Does anyone have any ideas why this might be so? Is this adjustable at all given that the car has the ability to go faster than 45kph in EV mode?

 

What I noticed is that I did not get the tripple beep when I was coasting down I-70 announcing that I was getting kicked out of EV mode. The SOC was really high and I've noticed that even when not in EV mode you can accelerate much harder if you're in the green than under more typical SOC levels.

In fact, now that I think about it, the Coastal EV mod doesn't give you a notifying beep unless 1.) your request is denied or 2.) you're on the consumption (maybe we should call it the TB) screen. So what probably happened to me was that since my battery was in the green the car exhibited all the attributes of being in EV mode even though it had automatically switched out as I exceeded 34 mph.

My only complaint about the mode is that there aren't audible signals that the car's state has changed unless you toggle the MTD. It'd be nice if you always got an audible confirmation when switching between modes.

 

Even though the US cars are not equipped with the EV button originaly, do you still have the EV light on the dash to confirm that you are in EV mode?
On an EV button equipped car, as far as I can remember if you have the MFD on the Energy Monitor screen and you press EV there is no audible beep, but if you are on another screen (eg on Consumption) and you press EV you do get an audible beep and the MFD returns to Energy Monitor screen.
The three beeps when exiting EV mode are the same.

 

huh? I've run in electric mode upwards of 47 mph...of course the drain on the battery means I can only do it for about 2 miles or so

 

You can run on electric only at all sorts of speeds, if going downhill - I've done so at over 60mph.

The only difference is that above 42mph the engine will be spinning to prevent MG1 being over-revved. But it's not consuming fuel. I'd call that electric-only operation (and it appears as such on the MFD), but it appears Evan doesn't; he calls it "zero fuel burn".

The extra effort involved in turning the engine electrically normally rules out electric-only/zero-fuel-burn running on the level above 42mph. But this isn't absolute - a good tailwind might get you above 42.