[founder]

What I read about the Prius, the standard version has a 1.8 kWh NiMh battery.

From the size of the car, this should be at last 10 km. Special at slow motion city trafic.

Today, I made a test drive with a Prius.

At the begining of the Alpenstraße in Salzburg is green wafe at 50km/h

Thought this would be good to test EV. But after only 1 km, the Prius switched back to gasoline engine.

At the Nontal bridge, there is usual slow moving city traffic.
I switched with 80% battery on the indicator again to EV.
30 km/h, a traffic jam slowly moving towards the traffic light at the Staats-bridge. Just after 1 km as I got green at the Staats-bridge, again switched back to gasoline engine.

I think the energy usage can be for this distance only 150..180 Wh,
but in no was 1800 Wh what should be the total of the battery.

Why?
What happens?

 

[KTPhil]

For one thing, the ECU manages the energy state of the battery between something like 20 and 80% capacity always, and prefereably in a narrower range. This is done to prolong it's life. The total capacity of the battery, from 100% full to total discharge is therefore never used.

Perhaps it also wanted to keep the cat warm.

 

[Astrowoman]

I hear the display is 40% to 80%, so the battery wants to be in that range. 1 battery "bar" appears to be 1 or 2 leaf-cars which are 50Wh (observtion, does anyone know the equivalence for sure?). There are, I think, 10 bars on the display, so the full range would be equivalent to 25 bars which gets you right in the range of 1.8 kWh for the battery potential.

 

[Tideland Prius]

It's 8 bars not 10. 1-2 is pink, 3-6 is blue, 7-8 is green.

The reason, founder, is either the cat. converter is not warm enough, you dropped to 3 bars or the engine is barely warm so any harder on the throttle will turn on the engine. The computer will manage itself quite nicely.

 

[Astrowoman]

It's 8 bars not 10. 1-2 is pink, 3-6 is blue, 7-8 is green..

I sit corrected. My visual memory was trying to put 3-8 blue and add two more on top. How many Wh is a bar?

 

[Tideland Prius]

I have no idea. All I remember from a past post is that braking from 40 is almost 1 leaf car. Not quite but almost

 

[clett]

The battery in the '04 onwards Prius is only 1.3 kWh. The computer will only let you have 40% of that (range is 40 - 80% charge), so that's only 0.5 kWh.

This is enough for about 2 miles EV mode (3kms), given an EV button and starting from max bars on the battery display.

From half-bars to zero-bars would give about 1.5kms.

 

[founder]

The battery in the '04 onwards Prius is only 1.3 kWh. The computer will only let you have 40% of that (range is 40 - 80% charge), so that's only 0.5 kWh.

This is enough for about 2 miles EV mode (3kms), given an EV button and starting from max bars on the battery display.

From half-bars to zero-bars would give about 1.5kms.

I think the cycle range could even be less.

0.5 kWh should be enough for 5 km slow driving

 

[clett]

There's loads of things that can impact on EV mode range. Mainly it's how much the air conditioning is on and how much power the other accessories are taking. Eg sitting in traffic with the AC on but without moving will still use up a fair amount of battery charge and reduce range considerably.

Having said that, people in the UK with the EV button typically report about 1.5 - 2 miles (3 kms) range in EV mode before the engine kicks in, so I think your test-drive was a little low range. Also, remember that when you go above 42 mph (67 km/h), the engine must start automatically.

 

[melgish]

Actually EV will disable at 34 mph...

Today I had the quintisential opportunity to use EV mode.

Running late, I hit heavier than expected traffic changing from the east west onto I-4. Ok, it's the same traffic everyone else there sees daily, but I'm ususally at work by then. Anyway, as I got onto my place on line, I noticed I had 7 green bars.

I engaged EV and kept the engine off for 6 or 7 full stops (and 10 or 15 near full stops) over the 1/2 - 3/4 mile or so it takes to get on I-4 and get moving again. Ended up with 5 blue bars, which quickly got back to the normal 6 on the highway.

 

[KMO]

From a cold start, you'd be lucky to make a mile in EV mode, in my experience. And you're unlikely to have a "full" battery charge. The full 8-bar range is only 40% of the capacity, and typically you're only likely to start at 6/7, and EV mode cancels at 2, thus you often only get to use about 20-25% of the total for EV.

You also need to realise that the battery scale is not linear. Bars 6 and 7 hold far more charge than bars 3-5 (much like the fuel gauge).

If your display is showing 6 bars, and is actually nearly at 7, you might easily get twice the range of someone whose display is showing 5 bars.

This non-linearity can easily be observed - after a long motorway cruise, the battery will typically be showing 6 bars, and is actually not far off 7. Switch to EV mode as you enter a town at 30mph, and the display will take a long time to go from 6->5. It will then go from 5->2 in nearly the same time.