It just occurred to me that we've had our P.Prime for just over a week, and about 460 miles, and I haven't tried EV Auto mode yet! It's all been pure EV mode other than driving 10ish miles home from the dealership, and one trip to a South-Austin mall in which we clearly couldn't make the entire trip in on a single charge (and there were no chargers there). So, I switched to hybrid mode during the continuous, open-road, highway-speed portion of the trip to that mall, EV on the way back and below 55ish MPH. There's a chance we might take a mini-road-trip today, and I'll probably take the same strategy: EV below 55ish; HV above. Might experiment a bit with EV Auto, though... iPhone ? Pro
I'm surprised that EV auto isn't default. I have to remember to switch to it every time - which I often don't.
Why would it be default? I haven't used it yet either. I'm either doing pure Ev driving around town or doing pure Hv driving on a long trip.
So, I gather you find EV Auto ... useful or better than other modes, at least under some circumstances? I suppose one could call EV Auto mode a "meta-hybrid" mode, "meta" in the admittedly-confusing sense of being a "hybrid" of EV and HV modes, HV being the non-meta-"hybrid" mode. By that admittedly-confusing terminology, it would seem to me that the most useful meta-hybrid mode would be one that switches to HV over 55ish MPH and EV below, especially if that speed is sustained. From what I gather though, EV Auto is related to acceleration -- kicking in HV operation when you "step on it" -- more than it is related to speed. iPad ? Pro
Hv is already a meta mode. It uses Ev at low power demands when the engine doesn't need to stay warm and engine power at higher power demands.
It would be nice if the default was settable option. I think EV Auto is going to be what I use, but it will be kind of a pain to turn it on every day. Oh well, at least you can change it on the fly...
Oh, don't take that as advice from me! I'm choosing EV Auto (when I remember to turn it on) because I've had the car less than 2 weeks, so I figure she is going to make better driving choices than I would.
Hmmm... It's a "hybrid" in that it uses a combination of electric and gasoline power, but I don't think it's "meta-hybrid" in the sense of being a hybrid of hybrid operation with something else. Well, whatever... iPhone ? Pro Only a little I've one week for me, so... In what scenarios do you find it best to use? iPhone ? Pro
Living in the sticks, the majority of my ride to the closest city is mostly eight miles of country roads. Or to the next largest city, 30 miles of highway. Only a couple of times have I seen the engine kick in when in EV Auto. It pretty much burns down the battery, then kicks into the hybrid mode.
Gotcha. I gather it's more like to kick in the ICE when try to accelerate fast that when you try to drive fast. iPhone ? Pro
That's basically it, there isn't a magic MPH that I've found (at least under 85MPH) that it'll kick on at. It's all about demand on the engine. Quick acceleration for example or sustained pull on a hill. Otherwise it's best if you move it to HV mode if you are at freeway speeds and you need more range than you have left on EV mode. That's my take on it.
EV/Auto mode is pretty much what EV mode was in the first generation (PiP). The overall philosophy was "use the most efficient fuel source for the current situation". For higher power load, the ICE is more efficient than the electric motor, so kick in the ICE when the power load indicates that. In other situations, the electric motor is more efficient, so that is what it uses there. But Toyota found that customers wanted an extended range EV (like the Volt), not necessarily the most efficient operation, and customers considered the ICE coming on when you stepped on the throttle to be a defect. So they remedied that in the Prime by changing EV mode to be "EV-only, even if it is not the most efficient choice", and provide the former mode with EV/Auto.
100 km/hr (about 62mph), due to the mechanical design of the transaxle. But there was an ongoing mystery of all the conditions that would trigger the ICE. These include the outside temperature being under 60F (unless you turned off the climate control), and pressing the throttle just a little too hard.
