When I drove my brand new Prius home from the dealer, I was on a flat freeway and for the first time since I bought it, I felt very slight accelarations and decelerations almost like when an a/c compressor comes on. They apperared to correlate to the electric motor cutting in and out. Is this normal and do others notice the same thing?
Welcome to PriusChat and yes sounds perfectly normal. That is the beautiful sound of the HSD doing its thing adjusting the ICE and electric motors for maximum efficiency. Watch the arrows on your MFD and see if they don't coincide with the sounds you hear. In time you will get used to new driving differences. Keep reading this Forum and you will get all kinds of good information to help enjoy your Prius. But please read through the owners manual, answers to almost all your initial questions can be found there.
Thanks for your reply. I looked through the manual and did not see anything in there about the decels/accels that I was experiencing and likewise did not see any posts regarding this phenomenon. Used to fly planes off a carrier and it reminded me of the throttle movements we make to keep on glideslope and on speed which result in the same physical sensations.
The car will sound like a slipping clutch, or a torque converter with low fluid. Be assured, whatever RPM/power is not getting directly to the wheels is sent to MG1 (what starts the engine and more often acts as a generator), and either fed back to MG2 (the traction motor), or the battery. This is done by the PSD (Power Split Device), which can best be described functionally as equating to a differential. See http://home.earthlink.net/~graham1/MyToyot...PriusFrames.htm and choose the link Understanding the Prius on the left.
