Just wondering if anyone had done efficiency comparison b/w power mode and eco mode? I understand it's hard to compare, but one could use the same commute twice, once in power mode, another time in eco mode. Do it multiple times and average. Should be reasonable. Too bad that my commute kept having random jams at different places, making it hard to determine somewhat accurately. But my feeling was that accelerate quickly from 20 mph to 60 mph with power mode does not use noticeably more gas/battery than slowly accelerate from 20 to 60 in eco mode. I was watching mpg (when in HV mode) or range left (when in EV mode) to reach that fairly rough estimate. Anyone else had done comparison? I care about this comparison because I like the power mode much more because in heavy traffic, slow accerleation makes lane switch or merging into local hwy much harder and slightly more dangerous. So I'd like to stay in power mode unless eco mode is much more gas/battery friendly. So far, I don't think that's the case.
overall consensus between these two modes (which toyota designed in 2010) is that it depends on your abilities. there is no real difference, except pedal travel mapping, but eco does suppress a/c and heat. but to answer your question, no, i don't believe so.
Yeah, steady state on level freeway, I doubt there'd be any difference. ECO is making some changes to AC behaviour, behind the scenes, but in the main it's just changing the amount of gas pedal travel to get whatever throttle response. With our third gen, I found Normal (neither ECO or PWR) just fine. Between ECO and Normal, if anything, I find it easier to control pedal in Normal, find the travel inordinately long, harder to modulate, in ECO, if that makes any sense. My understanding is the fourth gen has shifted all the modes towards more aggressive, by roughly one mode, ie: fourth gen ECO is roughly the same as third gen Normal. If that's the case, I'd probably be fine with fourth gen ECO then.
Also, I remember someone mentioning that the A/C and the throttle mapping have been separated on the Prime, whereas the PiP had them linked so there was one Eco mode that affected both the A/C and throttle mapping.
