Hybrid - is ev mode useless?

[FPSUsername]

From what I know, the corolla hybrid MHEV I have has a 100hp 1.8 NA gasoline engine combined with a 100hp electro motor, combined at 140hp.

The car has an ev mode that's useful when driving in the city or towns, at least you'd think it's useful.

Why is the ev mode so restrictive in its use? If you press the pedal more than half way, it disengages and the car drives in hybrid mode. I can understand the perspective, but wouldn't the kickdown be a more appropriate tipping point for ev mode to disengage?

Furthermore, why does ev mode disengage at 40km/h? In small towns in straights the speed is usually around 50-60km/h. Oddly enough, I was once driving with 55km/h and I tried to engage the ev mode (which usually results in an error that the speed is exceeded), and it actually worked.

Is there a way to up the speed limit for EV mode using Techstream to make it actually useful?

[RzrAzr]

I would say the perception that it is for driving in towns is wrong with hybrids as the Battery is very small for continuous operation. More like parking in the garage when you don't want fumes entering the house. I personally never use it.

[Roy124]

1 minute ago, RzrAzr said:

I would say the perception that it is for driving in towns is wrong with hybrids as the battery is very small for continuous operation. More like parking in the garage when you don't want fumes entering the house. I personally never use it.

Agree,  you can 'force' EV mode but better just to let the car do its own thing.

If you go to Ready mode and immediately switch of the conditioning the car can be backed our of the garage on EV.  If the car thinks there is insufficient HV Battery or it's too cold it will switch the ICE on regardless. 

When returning from the local shop, 1,200 yards and a 50m rise, I occasionally force EV and go up below 30mph.  Usually this will deplete the HV, override the EV, and the ICE will start.  I don't think this is best practise.

[FPSUsername]

I can't seem to find any information regarding the Battery capacity, but I believe that the car would have no issues to go through town in full ev mode if the car would allow it.

EV mode is great for fuel efficiency with slow moving traffic, but I hate that the ICE turns on once you pass 40 and keeps on running when you arrive at the next traffic lights (at least the engine isn't idling for nothing as it charges the Battery, but still, it sounds like a waste to be converting energy this way).

[Bernard Foy]

The cars computers are set up to avoid users inadvertently doing any harm to the cars systems. I just let it do its own thing. I never agrue with computers LOL.

[Paul john]

Switch to eco mode if you want ev to be activated more often…

ev ( the green icon) is activated at all speeds under 70mph.

”pure ev mode” disables the switch to ice until certain conditions are met. Like the Battery level or acceleration / speed.

just have a look at the drive mode animation to confirm that power does indeed come from the Battery rather than the ice.

limitaions on speed or fast acceleration when using “pure ev” are to prevent the overdrain on the Battery causing deformations and wear due to high current demand. Basic physics.

one way to prove this quite dramatically is to short an aa battery by connecting it to a nail ( im not advising this). It will show massive heating of the battery and some deformation. This is due to the massive current drain when shorted.

 

[Mojo1010]

As others said, forcing EV mode is only good for coming out of a garage. Just let the car do it's thing in driving no need to force/cannot be done most of the time anyway. My Yaris can go ~ 100kph on EV, drive normally. 

[Parts-King]

1 hour ago, FPSUsername said:

I can't seem to find any information regarding the battery capacity, but I believe that the car would have no issues to go through town in full ev mode if the car would allow it.

EV mode is great for fuel efficiency with slow moving traffic, but I hate that the ICE turns on once you pass 40 and keeps on running when you arrive at the next traffic lights (at least the engine isn't idling for nothing as it charges the battery, but still, it sounds like a waste to be converting energy this way).

In order to preserve the long term condition of the Battery, the ECU will do all the work and keep the Battery at an optimal charge. This is how Hybrids work, you want the car to do something it is not designed to do, it is not possible to "up the speed limit" of the Battery range 

[yossarian247]

3 hours ago, FPSUsername said:

I can't seem to find any information regarding the battery capacity, but I believe that the car would have no issues to go through town in full ev mode if the car would allow it.

 

The traction Battery capacity on a Corolla 1.8 hybrid is absolutely tiny at 3.6 Amp hours.

To put that into perspective, the Battery on a Tesla Model 3 is apparently 230 Amp hours! Therefore you can see why the 'EV' range on a hybrid is very small. Also there is no way to 'plug-in' a Corolla hybrid Battery to recharge it, and it relies totally on the traction battery to restart the petrol engine. So if you used anywhere near the full capacity of the battery it would potentially be unable to restart the ICE and you'd be stuck. Hence the reason the ECU prevents you from running the traction battery right down.

[AndrueC]

I think the OP is misunderstanding the main purpose of the electrical system. The main purpose is to assist the ICE in operating at its most efficient.

Toyota's HSD is not an EV powertrain with an ICE attached. They aren't equal partners. Toyota's HSD is an ICE that has an EV system to help it out a little bit.

Being able to drive the car purely on electrical power is a cute trick but it's not the main feature of the system. Electrical power in our HSD is not 'free' energy. It was all generated from burning fuel at some point.

The real fuel consumption improvements come from the EV and the ICE working together.

[yossarian247]

17 minutes ago, AndrueC said:

I think the OP is misunderstanding the main purpose of the electrical system. The main purpose is to assist the ICE in operating at its most efficient.

Toyota's HSD is not an EV powertrain with an ICE attached. They aren't equal partners. Toyota's HSD is an ICE that has an EV system to help it out a little bit.

Being able to drive the car purely on electrical power is a cute trick but it's not the main feature of the system. Electrical power in our HSD is not 'free' energy. It was all generated from burning fuel at some point.

The real fuel consumption improvements come from the EV and the ICE working together.

Quite a common misunderstanding I think. I was recently talking to someone with a Lexus hybrid who said they hated it because 'the engine is stopping and starting all of the time'. I tried to explain that was exactly what it was supposed to do, just drive it and forget what the engine is doing, but they couldn't seem to take that on board.

[Cyker]

4 hours ago, AndrueC said:

I think the OP is misunderstanding the main purpose of the electrical system. The main purpose is to assist the ICE in operating at its most efficient.

Toyota's HSD is not an EV powertrain with an ICE attached. They aren't equal partners. Toyota's HSD is an ICE that has an EV system to help it out a little bit.

Being able to drive the car purely on electrical power is a cute trick but it's not the main feature of the system. Electrical power in our HSD is not 'free' energy. It was all generated from burning fuel at some point.

The real fuel consumption improvements come from the EV and the ICE working together.

Absolutely this!! ^^^^

Hybrids are not EVs! They aren't supposed to run on EV-only power for long periods; The Battery is tiny, you could maybe get a mile or two out of it if you drained it from 100% to 0, but since the Battery gets maintained around 50% most of the time you likely won't even get that, esp. as EV mode is disabled when the SoC drops below 50% on the new hybrids!

The sole reason the Battery is there is to capture wasted energy - That's it; It's small so that once that energy is captured, it has to deploy it quickly so that it can make space to capture more wasted energy.

Just drive it like it's a very efficient petrol car - Forget it's got electric anything in it.

Honestly, that EV-mode button is the single most pointless button in the car, esp. in the newer hybrids; It was at least vaguely useful in the older ones, as they bright the battery up to higher states of charge, but the new ones try to keep the battery around 50% so the EV-mode button hardly ever works. I personally wish they'd remove it and replace it with a force-charge button, so I can pre-charge the battery if I know I'm going to be stuck in a traffic jam for a long time and save the engine having to start while I'm not moving!

 

[yossarian247]

I did once find an actual use for the EV button.  In about 2021 I'd taken my wife to a drive-through covid testing facility and as we were waiting in a queue of cars, the staff were telling everyone to turn their engines off. I didn't want to as it would have meant turning the aircon off and the windows were already steaming up. So, I just pressed the EV button and pretended I'd turned the ignition off.

There you go then, that's what its for. To pretend you've turned your ignition off during a covid test 😁

[Roy124]

I think Toyota switches and layout are laughable. 

Which is used more, traction control or heated steering wheel?

Why is the Auto Headlight switch buried out of sight or tactile touch?

[Popama]

@Roy124, completely agree on the positioning of the  Auto Headlight switch and the neighboring buttons. 15cm higher instead of the bulging chunk of dashboard would have been much more normal.

As for the EV Mode button its placement was also chosen by Toyota so I do not blame people for wanting to use it.
I found it to be useful only for reducing cold starts. In my case the parking spot is 200m from my apartment and I use it to carefully cruise in EV mode from the spot to my location. This way I reduce the number of cold starts by half on a typical long journey. Similarly when I get home I unload the luggage and then I cruise back to the parking spot in EV Mode.

I tried depleting the Battery using EV mode when I knew there was a long slope on the road ahead, but could not get it working because of the higher speed.

[AndrueC]

2 hours ago, Popama said:

@Roy124, completely agree on the positioning of the  Auto Headlight switch and the neighboring buttons. 15cm higher instead of the bulging chunk of dashboard would have been much more normal.

But that would have meant the bright green LED shining in our eyes. At least where they currently are I find the light blocked by my right arm most of the time. That at least saves me the bother of sticking some tape over it.

But there are several aspects of the controls I don't like:

• No tactile feedback on the cruise control buttons - easy to cancel it when you just want to resume it.
• Why does the CC default to off? At least on my last car it was a latching button so I could leave it latched to on.
• Same with Park Hold - why should I have to keep activating it every time I drive the car?
• I think rear window wash should be on the rotational nob along with the other rear window controls.
• Why do I have to have the front fog lights on in order to have the rear's on? Rear fog lights are more useful and more important than front fog lights.

[Obsidian Estate]

I've never pressed the auto main beam button in mine so its location isn't a problem. The same with the self parking thing.

[FPSUsername]

Thanks all for the answers. So toyota just tried to make a selling point with the ev mode and people (like me) misunderstand the use.

Ps: the auto brights work like crap on the corolla (2023 model). It's not as good as on VAG. Too narrow FoV and decides to turn on high beams when a car is 2km ahead on a straight in the darkness.

[AndrueC]

1 hour ago, FPSUsername said:

Ps: the auto brights work like crap on the corolla (2023 model). It's not as good as on VAG. Too narrow FoV and decides to turn on high beams when a car is 2km ahead on a straight in the darkness.

Well that's good to know. They are just as bad on the 2019 Corolla. Not a patch on the auto main beam of my Honda Jazz. Even those occasionally concerned me but mostly I could accept that 'the car knows best'. For the Corolla they are clearly rubbish. Best used as 'in case I forget'.

I can only hope that Toyota improved the detection for the dynamic lighting system.

[Cyker]

On 1/2/2024 at 9:47 PM, Roy124 said:

Why is the Auto Headlight switch buried out of sight or tactile touch?

I think it's to discourage its use because it's not very good  

On 1/4/2024 at 11:55 AM, AndrueC said:

But there are several aspects of the controls I don't like:

• No tactile feedback on the cruise control buttons - easy to cancel it when you just want to resume it.

I have come to feel that way too - The other day I pressed the button to change the following distance but accidentally pressed the LTA button as well and disabled the CC auto steer - There is no indication or symbol for this on the HUD, so I didn't realize I'd done it until we got to a bend and the car nearly drove into the verge in the half-second I was waiting for it to steer before I yanked it back!   

Good thing I had my hands on the wheel still, but I couldn't help noticing the other part of the LTA (LKA?? The anti-lane drift bit) didn't do anything to stop the car driving into the verge, which it's normally quite randomly aggressive about in normal driving! Does it get disabled when the CC is on or something?

They did used to put a little bump or something on similar buttons in the old cars which was quite helpful for this My Mk1 had controls on the BACK of the steering wheel, but they were right where you fingers were, were big and chunky and had a protruding and a dimple to differentiate them so you couldn't mix them up; I miss stuff like that.

It's one thing I dislike about modern vehicles, as all the controls are designed to look good more than they are for functionality, and as a function-over-form person that drives me crazy! I don't care if the controls are symmetrical with art deco inspired lines, I want to be able to tell which one is which and where they are without looking at them!!

On 1/4/2024 at 11:55 AM, AndrueC said:

• Why do I have to have the front fog lights on in order to have the rear's on? Rear fog lights are more useful and more important than front fog lights.

This just seems to be a Toyotaism - Every one we've had has a 2-stage switch which turns the fronts on first.

The Mk4's is particularly annoying tho' - In the Mk1 and Mk2, you twist the inner collar 1 click for fronts and then to the 2nd click for rears and fronts.

For some reason, in the Mk4 they changed this so the collar has 1 click for the fronts, but the 2nd position to turn on the rears twists to where the 2nd click would be, but then springs back to the first position! I don't understand why they changed this, as it's much less intuitive and you can't tell if the rear fogs are on by feel any more.

I initially thought the switch was broken, as I was expecting it to latch on the 2nd click - Smeg knows what anyone behind was thinking as I was flashing them with my rear fogs!   I use the fogs very very rarely and can envisage this confusing me again next time I have to use it...!

[Rhymes with Paris]

18 minutes ago, Cyker said:

This just seems to be a Toyotaism - Every one we've had has a 2-stage switch which turns the fronts on first

This is actually an advantage for me,as I like to have as many cool looking lights on as possible on Sunday nights at the McDonald's car park.

In fact I found two sets of 12v led multi coloured chaser lights in Lidl that have adhesive backing tape, which look great on the interior of the car, aswell as on the bonnet.

 

 

 

[DC_Ms]

5 hours ago, Cyker said:

I think it's to discourage its use because it's not very good  

 

 

 

I have the MY23 Excel model … and it is perfect 🤷‍♂️

[Extreme_One]

My MY23 is extremely good too. Light years ahead of the MY21.

[Chainbreaker]

Quote

I have the MY23 Excel model … and it is perfect 🤷‍♂️

I agree with this, but it's worth noting that the MY23 excel has adaptive high beam (AHS) which differs from the automatic high beam system found on other models of the corolla.

The AHS system are what other manufacturers call matrix headlights, where the headlights remain on full beam but blank off the beam when needed such as oncoming traffic etc to maximise the beam. Whereas the automatic high beam is just that, it switches the high beam on and off depending on road conditions.

The AHS are the best headlights I've ever had on any of my cars and does make a big difference to night driving. 

[Guest]

The system manages itself.  Being able to use EV mode depends on a lot of factors though. The car may not be able to continue to run on electric for a variety of reasons.

Expectations from Toyota's hybrid system are in line with the best logic with today's technology:  Electric mode where it matters, slow moving and short lived slow traffic situations / in a city or garage. Then... when on the open road, when serious speed and long term power is needed, and engine. 

Electric: more efficient at slow / low speeds, zero emissions when you're around people with lungs 

Engine: more efficient at prolonged / higher speeds. Emissions but they're not so bad when flying along long roads lined with trees that soak up the CO2