PHEV

[altocumulus]

6 hours ago, Ancient Nerd said:

At least the PHEV has the battery as a reason for losing boot space. I still can't see the justification for filling the standard Prius under boot space with a load of polystyrene foam.

Perhaps that was there in anticipation of putting a larger Battery in at future stage of the design, and they forgot it and put the Battery over the top!

[altocumulus]

Home to Aberdeen, a road I've driven along for almost 30 years.

22 miles.

Little change over that time, other than the addition of 2 sets of school-restrictions to 20mph and a new fly-over close to Aberdeen for the new periphery road.

Prius Gen 2 & 3 : To Aberdeen, around 60-65mpg - remove 5-10 in winter.

RAV4 : 45-50mpg - again 5-10 less in winter

RAV4 Hybrid : 55-60mpg.

First trip Aberdeen this morning, temp 7-8C : 85.1mpg.

All readings as per the on-board read-out.

Looking promising!

Generally the return journey is around 10mpg less (more up-hill than down!)

[altocumulus]

One thing I've noticed is that in EV mode, the ICE will occasionally kick in, even with a 'full' Battery. - Perhaps that's the main difference between EV and EVCity in that the latter doesn't allow the ICE?

 

No longer can I strive to achieve a full house of bars on the trip information display - in EV it doesn't even give a full bar .....

 

Battery charge reached 33.5 mile range for this morning.

 

[Catlover]

3 hours ago, altocumulus said:

One thing I've noticed is that in EV mode, the ICE will occasionally kick in, even with a 'full' battery. - Perhaps that's the main difference between EV and EVCity in that the latter doesn't allow the ICE?

 

No longer can I strive to achieve a full house of bars on the trip information display - in EV it doesn't even give a full bar .....

 

Battery charge reached 33.5 mile range for this morning.

 

I would think that's the computer looking after the ICE. It would be bad for an engine to get cold and suddenly fire into life when you may be doing some mph. So the computer fires the engine up to keep some heat in it. I think.

[QuantumFireball]

Again, not sure about the new model, but on the Gen 1 Plug-in the ICE will start for a short period if you drive 200 km without it. Is that what you mean?

[Ten Ninety]

8 hours ago, altocumulus said:

One thing I've noticed is that in EV mode, the ICE will occasionally kick in, even with a 'full' battery. - Perhaps that's the main difference between EV and EVCity in that the latter doesn't allow the ICE?

 

No longer can I strive to achieve a full house of bars on the trip information display - in EV it doesn't even give a full bar .....

 

Battery charge reached 33.5 mile range for this morning.

 

The ICE hasn't kicked in at all for me when using EV mode yet. Is it related to speed or load? Or temperature?

My Battery range seems to have settled at around 40 miles, after creeping up from 30 when I first had the car. The estimate appears to be related to past consumption, as it's dipped to high 30s on days following a less economical journey. However, I find it's still annoyingly optimistic as the most I've ever seen in reality is 36 miles and most days getting past 32 is a struggle, yet each morning it still seems to insist that 40 is possible. I find this mildly amusing given Toyota's notoriously pessimistic 'empty tank' petrol lights that come on with a hundred miles left in the tank.

On a related note, do you run the real-time meter on the info screen instead of Traffic Sign Assist? If so, have you any ideas about what the little yellow triangle might mean on the real-time meter in EV mode. In HV mode it's clearly the current average consumption and moves up and down accordingly, but in EV mode it never seems to move at all. I wondered if it was something along the lines of the average consumption required to achieve the indicated range?

[altocumulus]

I suspect it kicked in on the hills, but I was so surprised to notice the bars that It didn't register as to why. We have a lot of inclines around, so I should be able to monitor it more closely.

I agree about the optimistic Battery range, though it proved accurate on the way into Aberdeen. It does, however lose 5 miles or so on the homeward journey. Yesterday coming home from the airport we had to use the heating which probably won't help. But the round-trip of 42 miles gave us an on-board readout of 145mpg and 94/100. It's annoying I'm penalised in the score by being warm in the car!

I'll have a look at the real-time meter. The Traffic Sign Assist is, if anything, more inaccurate that it was in either of the RAV4s! - perhaps height related?

On the pre-heat/cool as an option on charging, the Toyota advisor has obviously been chatting to her Techs and they passed on a copy of the relevant pages from the manual!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At least they say the facility is there - just can't seem to experience it at the moment.

[altocumulus]

PV experience : ECOMode.

Home to Banchory, 29.5 miles. Roads wet, some rain.

Outbound : 63mpg, score 83/100.

Inbound : 79.9mpg, score 88/100. (Had 84.5mpg some 5 miles from home)

Had to periodically switch on de-misting which the scoring algorithm obviously frowns on!

Battery at start (after overnight charge) 30.5 miles, at end 32.5 miles.

Interesting exercise in many ways, suggests I could eek more mpg by using EV on those known incline stages of road, HV on descent/level.

Toyota could have added an inclinometer/altimeter so so it would recognise that occasionally one has to drive up hills!

[altocumulus]

On 10/8/2018 at 8:07 PM, Ten Ninety said:

On a related note, do you run the real-time meter on the info screen instead of Traffic Sign Assist? If so, have you any ideas about what the little yellow triangle might mean on the real-time meter in EV mode. In HV mode it's clearly the current average consumption and moves up and down accordingly, but in EV mode it never seems to move at all. I wondered if it was something along the lines of the average consumption required to achieve the indicated range?

I'll have a look on Saturday, I use EV to fetch the paper from the village and certainly it is a average pointer in HV mode. It's odd Toyota don't allow this to display in the HUD where it would be more easily viewable. I'd find it better than the ECO display that doesn't show the optimum blue band.

 

[altocumulus]

Hi Jay,

Real-time meter in EV mode.

As you can see, accelerate and the blue bar goes below the marker, otherwise it rises above. It's quite low down on the display and difficult to perceive any

real movement in it, in the same way it moves when in HV mode.

I wonder if it's related to Battery range and real mileage; i.e. stick on the pointer and one mile Battery range = one mile real road? : Above good, below bad!

[altocumulus]

From the manual ...

Quote

Current electricity consumption
When in EV/EV City mode, the current electricity
consumption during driving is displayed.
• The mark indicates the total average electricity
consumption since last reset until it is reset
again.
• When “Electricity Consumption Reset” (P. 254)
is performed, the data of the total average electricity
consumption is deleted and the mark is
reset to 0.

 

Huh!?

[Ten Ninety]

4 hours ago, altocumulus said:

I wonder if it's related to battery range and real mileage; i.e. stick on the pointer and one mile battery range = one mile real road? : Above good, below bad!

That's what it feels like to me as well.

4 hours ago, altocumulus said:

From the manual ...

I'd forgotten about that - I didn't pay much attention to it when reading the manual before I got the car. It's a bit daft that the electric consumption has to be manually reset separately when the petrol consumption resets according to whatever setting the display is using. However, this would explain why the yellow marker feels like it's the consumption level at which the range would be accurate, as the range appears to be calculated based on the average consumption!

[altocumulus]

1 hour ago, Ten Ninety said:

That's what it feels like to me as well.

I'd forgotten about that - I didn't pay much attention to it when reading the manual before I got the car. It's a bit daft that the electric consumption has to be manually reset separately when the petrol consumption resets according to whatever setting the display is using. However, this would explain why the yellow marker feels like it's the consumption level at which the range would be accurate, as the range appears to be calculated based on the average consumption!

I don't often, these days, forage into the manuals - often because they're written in poor syntax or full of what seems unnecessary waffle. I'm not too sure what the benefit to a driver is on the average consumption of electrical energy is.

[Ten Ninety]

1 hour ago, altocumulus said:

I don't often, these days, forage into the manuals - often because they're written in poor syntax or full of what seems unnecessary waffle. I'm not too sure what the benefit to a driver is on the average consumption of electrical energy is.

Agreed. I only read the manual in the week whilst I was waiting to pick up the car!

[altocumulus]

EV Journey. Shopping trip.

16 miles round.

Scoring 94/100 outbound; 96/100 inbound.

Battery charge range 27.5 miles - made it home with 1.6 miles to spare. No heating on.

[altocumulus]

mmm!

 

No "Off" switch for the lights. So if I don't feel they're needed, the auto-on is allowed to say otherwise.....

[PeteB]

2 minutes ago, altocumulus said:

...No "Off" switch for the lights. So if I don't feel they're needed, the auto-on is allowed to say otherwise.....

Yep!  Crazy.  Also means if sitting in Ready mode in a car park, garage etc. the lights will come on if the car thinks it's dull enough.

One could switch on parking/side lights manually, but if driving these aren't as good as DRLs unless it's pretty dark, in which case headlights are better anyway.

Also happens in Ignition mode - all warning lights on but Hybrid system off, so running off 12V Battery only so not a good idea to use this unless it's bright enough not to bring the lights on.

Why would Toyota make 2 different lights switches, but with only the one with no Off position available in the UK (and presumably some other markets)?

[Ancient Nerd]

Correct, it is seriously annoying. The nearest I can get is to switch to sidelights when parked and still in the car, so that I don't blind passing pedestrians. 

 

[altocumulus]

1 minute ago, PeteB said:

Yep!  Crazy.  Also means if sitting in Ready mode in a car park, garage etc. the lights will come on if the car thinks it's dull enough.

One could switch on parking/side lights manually, but if driving these aren't as good as DRLs unless it's pretty dark, in which case headlights are better anyway.

Also happens in Ignition mode - all warning lights on but Hybrid system off, so running off 12V battery only so not a good idea to use this unless it's bright enough not to bring the lights on.

Why would Toyota make 2 different lights switches, but with only the one with no Off position available in the UK (and presumably some other markets)?

Indeed; and its the first Toyota I've had with this anomaly. Perhaps it's a trend.....

 

 

[PeteB]

2 minutes ago, altocumulus said:

Indeed; and its the first Toyota I've had with this anomaly. Perhaps it's a trend.....

I see Lexus have now followed suit on the RX (and possibly other models).

The Gen 3 Prius with tech pack had AUTO AND OFF positions, as had an Aygo with auto lights I drove last year.

It may sound sensible to be unable to drive without lights on (and mostly is), but between making people think you're flashing them and other issues, I think it's a recipe for Toyota being on the wrong end of a major lawsuit if it leads to a KSI (Killed/Seriously Injured) collision.

Reminds me of the first Fly-by-wire Airbus, which had a feature that prevented the pilot from using reverse thrust while flying.  Perfectly sensible, except it used the wheel rotation speed to decide if the plane was flying or not.  One landed in a very heavy storm in Dusseldorf and aquaplaned down the runway, crashed off the end into a ravine.  The wheel brakes were no use because the plane was effectively water-skiing, and reverse thrust wasn't available because the software thought the plane was in the air.

[Heidfirst]

3 hours ago, PeteB said:

Reminds me of the first Fly-by-wire Airbus, which had a feature that prevented the pilot from using reverse thrust while flying.  Perfectly sensible, except it used the wheel rotation speed to decide if the plane was flying or not.  One landed in a very heavy storm in Dusseldorf and aquaplaned down the runway, crashed off the end into a ravine.  The wheel brakes were no use because the plane was effectively water-skiing, and reverse thrust wasn't available because the software thought the plane was in the air.

Do you have a link for this as I can't find it (& my Google-fu usually isn't bad)? I would have thought that the "weight on wheels" switch as used by many military aircraft for e.g. inhibiting gear retraction or weapons was a simpler way.

Or have you perhaps misremembered quite a lot of the details? I can fin this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_Flight_2904 but it's a later Airbus, it isn't Dusseldorf & tbh it's largely pilot errors that led to it.

On the other hand Lauda Air lost a B767 when a thrust reverser operated in flight ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauda_Air_Flight_004

[PeteB]

1 hour ago, Heidfirst said:

Do you have a link for this as I can't find it ...

Well, I'm flummoxed!  I thought I remembered a documentary from the early 1980s but can't find any reference.  I do recall the 2904 and Lauda Air incidents.

My recollection (which now seems to be dubious) was that landing gear retraction relied on weight switches in the gear legs and the thrust reverses and speed brake/spoilers used the wheel rotation speed.

[altocumulus]

Moving on 😄 😄

My birthday, and Chargemaster are kindly installing a point for me, as I write, in the garage.

 

[altocumulus]

Not too sure I understand the logic that has a chargepoint always "switched" on - I thought we were supposed to be 'saving' energy....

 

I shall see, in the morning, whether I do have, as they say, a communicating point. The leaflet left with us said it was a non-communicating point! And the lead is black - we wanted blue....

[Ten Ninety]

When I had a look at the Chargemaster stuff, it appeared that the free point was the most basic non-locking, non-communicating one. I think you have to pay more for the 'premium' communicating one that gives you access to charging data. I didn't bother with either in the end, as charging from the 3-pin overnight works well enough for me.

On a completely unrelated note, do your headlights 'steer' around corners when using the adaptive main beam? Mine definitely do not, despite the manual suggesting that they should. To be fair, forward illumination is so insanely bright all round that this doesn't matter, but I'm curious to know if it's another feature that's missing along with Climate Prep!