Hello everyone. I recently purchased my first prius, and hybrid vehicle in general. It's a white 2007 with 115k miles. The car is in decent shape but I am a total novice when it comes to hybrids. I wanted to jump in head first and see what the whole deal was about though. I've lurked around the forum for info on a lot of my questions but I've noticed something that seems strange. While on the screen that shows the battery bars I've noticed my battery wont drop below 6 bars. It seems to go between 6 and 7 bars, while at 6 its blue and switched to green for 7. Is this odd behavior? For a little more information, most driving I've been doing has been below 60mph. Its been roughly 20F here. Taking back roads out to my dad's yesterday I got up to 52mpg but for the most part my fuel economy has been in the high 30's. most trips are less than 10 miles so i would guess that is part of the lower mpg.
congrats and welcome! no, that is the correct behavior prius is a hybrid, not an electric vehicle in the sense of electric only. it is primarily a gas vehicle. the battery is only there to store and reuse what would be wasted energy. run a few tanks and figure your mpg's manually after refilling. 40mpg average isn't uncommon in winter. all the best!
I'd also guess that since you're new you're running the HVAC system. If you've got the heat turned up so you're nice and toasty, where does that heat come from? Only the engine. Which means the engine is running almost constantly just to provide "waste heat" to make you warmer. It tries to do something with the energy like charge the battery but there's only so much energy it can put in.
