I've been hitting the EV switch to keep the car in EV mode for the first couple minutes. It kicks off at about 20 mph. It does let me get up to speed using EV mode so my hope is that will translate into higher fuel savings. The default and Eco modes require starting up too slow while hitting EV lets me apply more power and faster acceleration. Wondering why Toyota didn't engineer that into the car though?
I have thought about this as well.Wayne Gerdes delays firing the ICE until 15mph or so which means using EV to get up to that speed. The GenIII Prius has EV Mode which makes this hypermiling technique quite easy to accomplish. I meant to ask Wayne about it but I didn't see him on Facebook yesterday.
I wouldn't be surprised if it is a battery life issue, pushing the battery discharge hard like that on each initial 0-20 startup. Toyota wants the battery to last a bit longer so they discourage it. Make us push the EV button at every stop.
i think there's a very slight fuel economy thing to it too for excessive "EV mode" use. most times, I use EV towards the end of my trip to drain down the battery.. so during initial startup, the traction battery charges up while the ICE gets warm. i do not know... but i've been delaying firing the ICE until about 15mph.. and it seems to be pretty good.
This is what I do as well. Kill two birds with one stone. Three if you live on or very near major streets and don't have to go through slow residential.
The EV mode is not available all the time. It won't run if there is not enough battery charge. I've done what you suggest when possible, but it ends up being possible only around 50% of the time. The other half the time it just beeps at me and displays the error message. See above. It's smarter than that.
