Hey guys, So this is my first prius and i'm a little confused about something that happened so if anyone could chime in that would be great! Yesterday I was merging onto the freeway and I had to push the gas to WOT to get on, after merging I released the gas pedal just to have to floor it again to get into the car pool lane.... There was a good 1-2 second delay before any power was fed into the wheels. Is this normal? sorry if I described it weird, hopefully someone knows what im talking about.
Well consider that there is not a lot of horsepower under your hood. Additionally, since there is not a transmission but a power splitting device you won't get a "kick down" as you would in a typical transmission. I would be careful pulling out. You'll get used to it as the car does have adequate power, just not neck snapping acceleration.
I had this issue with my Gen2. The problem, in my case, occurred when I would try to get a lot of power when the ice wasn't running. It would take those 1 or 2 seconds to start and come up to the proper RPM. This may have happened to you, after you got on the freeway and released the throttle the ice shut off and when you floored to move into the car pool lane you had to wait for it to start before you could get much power. After I discovered what was happening I always made sure the ice was running before I needed it. If, for example, you wish to pass and the ice is shutdown you should be able to push the throttle down a bit to start it first. I haven't done it for a while (no Prius at this time) but I think you could even apply a little brake with the left foot to keep from changing speed. Give it a try and see how it works.
The Prius engine does not run with an enrichened fuel mixture when accelerating, thus the ICE takes a tad bit longer to spin up. Battery state of charge and A/C load have a fair amount of impact here as well.
For what it's worth: I have been using the Power Mode button on my 2010 Prius when I am faced with entering my local (Chicago) freeway traffic during periods of busy, fast-moving, crowded conditions. Maybe it's because I am only one month into ownership of the Prius and into understanding how to best manage the engine system for different highway/traffic conditions---but the Power Mode has proved useful to me for inserting the car into fast-moving and heavy traffic. I don't hit the Power Mode button if I can see from the on-ramp that there are plenty of openings in the freeway traffic flow for entering at a more gradual pace.
Certainly sounds exactly what the Power Mode is for. I suspect if the OP was in this mode when that happend he probably wouldn't have had that loss of power. But who knows for sure... More power to you! Peter
