regenerative braking in neutral?

In neutral, you get only friction braking, no regeneration.

 

you can feel the change when you switch, the car takes off like a rocket!

 

Neither Motor/Generator is electrically active in N. This is why there is no regeneration in N and why so many who try to go through a car wash in N fail.

If at all possible, never use N. Toyota is required to offer an N, there are very few times you should use it.

(if you wish to 'clean' the friction brakes, stopping in N will do that)

 

fail what? fail to get their car clean?

 

They find their traction battery suffers serious depletion.

 

huh.....that's news to me. My EV range before and after never budges.

 

There's no other choice. You can't put in in Park because it won't go. You can't put it in Drive because it will drive off after it gets to the end.

 

We are referring to the car washes where you are supposed to put your car in Neutral and the car wash pulls the vehicle through the different stations.

The ones here tend to be where you stop your car within a certain area and the wash station travels around/above the vehicle.

 

And that is because Neutral disconnects ALL of the drive mechanism from the wheels; that includes the MG that does the regen.
It is designed that way on purpose.

 

There is another long thread on here about that.
ONE owner found that his HV battery level went down while doing that.
He then found out that it would NOT do that if he turned off the electrical accessories......mainly the A/C.

 

it's not an issue with plug ins.

 

ahhhh, plug in's, gotcha golly, it's been 5 years since I drove a Hybrid (non plug in of course)

 

yup, I go to the car wash that pulls the vehicle through different stations.

 

No it doesn't. You can't disconnect the drive mechanism from the wheels in a Prius. Neutral in a Prius just disables the power electronics that drive the motor-generators.

 

OK a slight mis-wording maybe.
An electrical disconnect is still a disconnect.

 

ok, who's the wise guy that pulled the plug on my Prime?

 

Shifting to neutral does a lot of things that, if you use neutral, you should be aware of. There are many older threads on the pros and cons. If you feel the need to use neutral, you should look them up. It is a lot more than unhooking the engine from the wheels.

 

I basically like Neutral for parallel parking on a hill: to roll a tire into contact with the kurb, with just gravity, sans engine motivation.