Plug In Mileage Before Fill Up

[barrycoll]

I know that this subject has been aired as a bi-product of other topics, but this link to the USA

http://priuschat.com/threads/how-many-miles-do-you-avg-b-w-fillups.133071/

and priuschat, had me thinking that Toyota are really missing a trick here. They advertise 15 miles EV as the main selling point of the extra £ks for a Plug IN, but when you look at the possible mileage per tank full, it can be astronomic!

Toyota do not tout this fact at all, and large tank diesels have it all their own way, when it comes to beating the Germans to the Med sunchairs.

Do Uk owners get such astro-mileages, or is this a case of Yank hyper mile-ing.????

Maybe I should have bitten the bullet for a PIP rather than a T Spirit 6 months ago

[Opifex]

I imagine the high mpg is where most of a journey can be completed using Battery and then recharge ready for the next journey. In the extreme if you never go over 14 miles before recharging your engine never starts so your mpg is infinite. On the other hand if you are "beating the Germans to the Med" the EV part of the journey will be a small proportion of total so I would expect the mpg to be more like the normal Prius.

I read a post recently that said the the larger Battery is only used during EV mode and that the Battery is somehow restricted to simulate a normal Prius when the EV mode is completed. Can anyone confirm this? If true it seems odd as I would have guessed that the hybrid would be tuned to make use of the larger battery rather than towing it around as dead weight.

[barrycoll]

Yes, maybe someone can confirm, or not, whether braking regeneration will re-fill the big Lithium Battery down a long mountain pass?

Why would it not????

On the other hand Nickel Metal Hydride batteries have a better track record than Lithiums, if the electric bike world is anything to go by

[Peter2673]

Yes, No and Yes- The Plug in manages its 4.3KWh in 2 chunks- 3KWh plug in charge and 1.3KWh "Hybrid battery" as in a normal Prius. After the plug in power has run out, the hybrid portion of Battery is charged as in a normal Prius from a mix of regenerative braking and syphoning off some power from the petrol engine when it is running. There would be no point whatsoever in using petrol power to top up the plug in portion of the battery's capacity as that would use petrol and leave nowhere to put your windmill generated Ecotricity mains power when you get home. However, to answer the next part of the question, yes, if you happen to have a fully charged hybrid portion of the Battery and you're moving briskly and at the top of a long steep hill, gently braking all the way down the hill would in a standard Prius involve the car's disc brakes, but in the Plug In it just piles the car's kinetic and potential energy in to the Battery so the dashboard display does go back in to EV mode. If you live in Colorado where they have steep descents that go on for 20 miles, this could make a real difference, but in the UK I've only seen it happen twice in my 15 months with a Plug In, and the most I recovered was half a mile of EV range, so it's not exactly a big deal.

The other fuel miser's trick involving a cross over of the battery's two chunks of allocated capacity is, a mile or two before you reach your recharge point, start to drive in a manner that doesn't start the petrol engine and runs down the hybrid portion of the battery (i.e. drive at speeds below 15mph- Yawn). The subsequent recharge will take about 20 minutes longer than the advertised hour and a half, but will fill the hybrid and EV bits of the battery's capacity.

Pete

[Peter2673]

Incidentally, Miles on a tank- I normally manage about 700 but woud do considerably more if the car did not have a totally stupid fuel gauge that cries Wolf when there are about 9 litres left in the tank. A display that flashes, says you have zero miles and accompanies that with an audible warning is hard to ignore, so you fill up and only manage to get 36 litres in to the 45 litre tank.

I'm tempted to get a can of petrol in the boot and run it to empty. Can anyone here tell me if the car starts easily after running out of petrol?

[Opifex]

Very interesting - thanks Peter.

There would be no point whatsoever in using petrol power to top up the plug in portion of the battery's capacity as that would use petrol and leave nowhere to put your windmill generated Ecotricity mains power when you get home.

Doh! Obvious really.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Don't forget where posters on Priuschat talk about gallons, that the US gallon is different to the Imperial gallon - 3.785 litres for the US Gallon as opposed to 4.546 litres for the Imperial gallon.

[johalareewi]

I'm tempted to get a can of petrol in the boot and run it to empty. Can anyone here tell me if the car starts easily after running out of petrol?

The standard gen3 prius becomes a brick when it runs out of petrol.

That's because when the petrol runs out, it then depletes the HV Battery, then it shuts down and has to be recovered to Mr T for an HV Battery recharge.

The PIP might be different.

[barrycoll]

Yes, thanks very much Peter, that really does put the PIP into context, and it is not, as I imagined, a very big battery'd 'ordinary' Prius.

So maybe Mr T is smart not to mention the Germans and the sunchairs...

But I am now wondering why 'just' 1.3 kw was chosen for the hybrid Battery size, other than weight, physical size, and re-chargeability...why not just use the 3 kw lithium as the hybrid Battery with a home charge option

[Peter2673]

"other than weight, physical size, and re-chargeability..."

I'd say exactly because of weight, physical size and re-chargeability. Not to mention price and longevity.

The plug in inherits the convenience of the same Battery algorithm in hybrid mode, while actually using up the ev charge on most journeys.

I think the next big advance might be to integrate the Battery control algorithm with the satnav. For a given journey the car could then plan where the ev charge could be deployed to greatest advantage, and ensure the car reaches journey's end with both ev and hv batteries empty. Having to set the satnav for familiar journeys just to help the Battery management would need a bit of driver re education, though.

Pete

[Peter2673]

Alan, thanks, I'll stick with 36 litres then.

[Cyker]

I'm tempted to get a can of petrol in the boot and run it to empty. Can anyone here tell me if the car starts easily after running out of petrol?

The standard gen3 prius becomes a brick when it runs out of petrol.

That's because when the petrol runs out, it then depletes the HV Battery, then it shuts down and has to be recovered to Mr T for an HV Battery recharge.

The PIP might be different.

Supposedly the HSD will not let you deplete it past ~20% when it runs out of fuel and will shut down when it hits that until you put some fuel in so it can charge up the HV...

[aCactus]

"other than weight, physical size, and re-chargeability..."

I'd say exactly because of weight, physical size and re-chargeability. Not to mention price and longevity.

The plug in inherits the convenience of the same battery algorithm in hybrid mode, while actually using up the ev charge on most journeys.

I think the next big advance might be to integrate the battery control algorithm with the satnav. For a given journey the car could then plan where the ev charge could be deployed to greatest advantage, and ensure the car reaches journey's end with both ev and hv batteries empty. Having to set the satnav for familiar journeys just to help the battery management would need a bit of driver re education, though.

Pete

I would want almost the opposite - if my journey invloves a long motorway stretch then I would like it to add to the EV charge so that I could have a full EV range when I leave the motorway. I d efinitely do not want to arrive at journeys end with a flat Battery (note singular EV & HV are the same pack)

[johalareewi]

Supposedly the HSD will not let you deplete it past ~20% when it runs out of fuel and will shut down when it hits that until you put some fuel in so it can charge up the HV...

When the gen3 prius runs out of fuel and HV Battery, it sulks big time.

http://priuschat.com/threads/2011-prius-ran-out-of-gas.121779/#post-1749404

Putting some fuel in isn't going to work in this case.