While driving=What does it mean when the BARS on the battery are GREEN & when they are BLUE?

blue is normal, green is unusual, but happens

ever seen purple?

 

I see green bars all the time on my way home. I have a strip of highway where I decelerate from 70 to 25 to turn off. I get the green bar almost every time. Also when going down hill. I actually had all the bars filled up so much on Sunday going down a mountain that all the arrows turned off.

 

Basically, the color of the bars only accentuates their presence.
Purple = "low" charge, Blue = "normal" charge, Green = "full" charge.

Seven to eight bars = Green
Three to six bars = Blue
One(!) to two bars = Purple

Just serves as an extra visual indicator of the current state of charge. Contains same information as the number of bars, just a simpler format.

 

I guess the actual answer is it turns green when the last 2 bars get filled, just like it turns purple when the last 2 bars are the only ones filled. Typically when I have green bars the system slowly makes its way to having the battery filled to the top blue bar. Takes a mile or 3 but it always settles down in the top blue bar. If it’s lower than that it always makes its way up to that same bar.

 

As a side note: Once you get down into purple, you will notice the engine working a lot harder. The Prius very strictly protects the traction battery SOC, and once it hits purple level engine power will constantly be used to charge the battery. The battery becomes a work draw, not a work source, and the engine has to work much harder.

On the other end of the spectrum, when you get into green (and the system is warm enough), you will notice that you can accelerate at a brisker clip from 0 without the engine coming on. Again, the Prius is a very intelligent system. On this end, it maximizes battery use as to prevent the battery having more than the ideal charge level.