I've been driving my car for a week now and have run it in EV mode several times. A few days ago, it stopped letting me put it into EV mode if I was going faster than 10 mph whereas before, I could go up to 25 mph. I keep getting the "max speed" error message. I looked in the manual and didn't see anything in there that would account for the change. I have checked this to make sure it isn't an acceleration or exertion issue. I've tried it several times under different conditions and it is consistently not allowing me to exceed 10 mph now. The only thing I can think of that might have been about the same time is I refueled. I haven't taken the time to figure out the features for tracking mileage etc, so just switched from trip A to trip B, in hopes of keeping the mpg data accurate. Any idea why it would change like that?
Following is a copy of my post. ----- The EV threshold is... 10mph: before completed warming up 25mph: after warming up Ken@Japan
Thanks Ken. I feel silly that the answer was already out there. :blush: I did a search... really I did! Nothing came up, I EVEN looked in the manual and didn't find anything about it. How did I miss that? You would think that kind of information would be front and center in the manual.
Note that you will also find EV affected by battery temperature and charge level, as well as throttle position. But what you saw this time was explained by Ken.
It was happening to me also. Mine changed to eco from ev at 26 mph. The temp was 80 degrees and I went in the DD to get a Dunkachino to go. I returned in 5 minutes. The engine was still hot but ever since, 10 mph in ev for me. I went to dealer and the Prius Tech said that there is no real mph # for the switch from ev to eco mode. He said that the battery was low. I said it's at 7 bars. He said that you can't go by the gage. I don't know what to do next. They say it's normal.
You should have asked him why Toyota bothered to put an inaccurate battery charge gauge there. By the way, you can't go by the speedometer either. Its just an estimate.
What I find if all the conditions are ideal is the amount of throttle with the accelerator. Try letting up a little and I almost bet you will see you can get it up to the 20+ MPH range (As long as battery charge and engine warm up is in range).
