Hi everyone. I tried searching for this, but couldn't really find if this was normal or not. I have an 05 Prius with 108k miles I bought about 2 months ago. My commute to work each morning is 1.5 miles with speeds of 25mph or less. Usually the car has acted the same way each day. The ice spins consistantly as I creep along to work. But last night the temps dropped to -10f and this morning when I left for work it was about 3 above. I turned on the car and instead of the few seconds after ready it takes for the ice to turn on it turned on right away today. I let it warm for about 3 minutes then set off. Right away I noticed the ice start to Rev up. And as I slowly approached 25 MPH it was reving abnormally high. It was showing energy from the ice to the wheels and to the mg and charging the battery which was at the normal state of charge. All blue, right before green. When I stopped at a light about 1 mile in the ice turned off as normal, and started right away as normal. But it seemed the ice was still revving as if it was working very hard to pick up a slow increase in speed. I pulled into my parking spot, battery showing green state of charge now, and the motor stopped as usual. I do not run the heat on this trip and it takes usually 5 minutes, so I just tough it out. Is this normal? The coldest it has gotten before today was maybe 10 above. Can 20 degrees colder make the ice behave so much differently or do I have bigger problems here? I realize these short trips are harder on the 12v battery so I do take 30+minute drives usually a few times a week. I have not noticed any other strange oddities before today, and no warning lights or strange beeps were occuring. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks Rob SCH-I800 ?
Battery power is considerably reduced at low temperature extremes, so the car has to make up for it with greater ICE power. I've never driven in -10F temps, but from my experience in positive single-digit temps, the behavior seems normal. See this for a discussion of battery performance and car behavior in extremely cold weather.
It's normal. The ICE needs to run to warm up as well as heat the catalytic converter and other pollution devices. With such a short trip, you can expect the ICE to run almost continuously and at higher than normal RPMs.
Well update, I drove home after the car had been sitting about 5 hours in 3 degree weather. It waited its usual 10 to 15 seconds after ready before the ice started. I waited the usual 3 minutes then headed off, this time with a full state of charge (all but 1 green bar), it drove and per usual no high revs, shut off at the light I always hit, nothing out of the ordinary... DROID PRO ?
I've also noticed that when the traction battery SOC is low then it uses the ICE much more and generally revs it much higher. I'd assume that in very cold weather the effect could be even more pronounced.
