Newbie Question

Well, what's your definition of "rather quickly"? Remember that the car *uses* the battery to help get you the best fuel economy possible. This means that the battery charge will go up and down as you drive. This is just a normal part of how the car works. Certainly if the battery indicator goes up or down by 1 or 2 bars in the course of normal driving, that's completely normal. I've found that, often, when I'm getting up to highway speeds it will drop several bars. But that's to be expected; it's using the battery to help you accelerate.

If it went from the top (i.e. 8 bars) to the bottom (i.e. 1 bar) in 30 seconds or something, then I'd be concerned. Otherwise, just drive it and enjoy it!

 

no worries, that's perfectly normal. the strength of the hybrid system is in actually using the battery (both to power the car and store excess energy), so it is actually very good!

 

Keep in mind that the Prius' battery is really pretty small. It would only move the car about 1 mile or so on flat ground by itself. Driving conditions will determine how much the SOC (state of charge) of the battery will fluxuate. Oh, and welcome to Prius Chat!

 

Also, don't be surprised if the battery display rarely shows you either of the top two bars, which would be in green. The Prius basically tries to keep the battery as shown on the display in about the middle. You'll probably only ever see one or two green bars if you go down a long, steep hill. Similarly, you'll almost never see the display showing only one or two bars (some people say they're pink while others say purple).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Taath @ Jul 26 2006, 06:27 PM) [snapback]292842[/snapback]</div>

Then I suggest watching this video... http://john1701a.com/prius/prius-video_multidisplay.htm

 

The big thing to remember with the EV mod is that the energy has to come from somewhere... some people have been able to use it to run down the batteries before coming to a large downhill where they know the regen braking will completely charge the batteries, but asside from this (and possibly one or two more) special case, it's pretty much just for showing off. Many people use it as an educational tool to inform people about the abilities of the Prius.

Personally, i use it a couple of times a day... there are a few spots where i know i'm going to be stopped by traffic lights, but with the ICE on at low speeds, it rarely turns off until you're completely stopped, so i force it off with the EV mod as i glide up to the light.

 

I use EV mode coming out of our housing development. We live up a hill, so I back out of the driveway and drive down the hill slowly in EV mode. If I didn't use it, the engine would run to warm up but get poor mpg because I'm only going slowly. I take EV mode off when I enter traffic and the ICE can warm up at the same time as powering me along.

If I don't use EV mode, the first bar on the MFD is at about 35, if I do it'll be 50 or so. On a short trip this does make a difference to my average, but not on a long one.

I've carefully refined the commute to work so that I can get about 64mpg, and likewise the drive into the city centre where I can get 71mpg or so, whereas at first I would get maybe 54 and 56 respectively. Using EV as described above is responsible for much of that. They are both 10 minute trips by the way. Oh, and all gallons are British