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questions about "new" 2002 prius system


gaspricestoohighforme

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Hi, just bought a 2002 Prius a few days ago. I'm questioning the software on the "energy monitor" screen where the battery symbol is, we thought when we test drove the car we remembered the green level in the battery symbol changing to indicate the power available in the battery. Now after we got it home that symbol never changes from 3/4 green. Is it supposed to "drain" and "fill" ? or not? :blink:

Then there's the time graph that shows on the "Consumption" screen; Sometimes I get a little yellow dot on the graphic every 5 to 10 minutes and I can't be sure if this is to be considered a good thing? the yellow dot is supposed to show "50wh regenerated". These dots only show like every other time I drive it or my wife.

I am not sure how to drive the little bugger to max the economy. Sometimes I get 50mpg without trying, other times it seems impossible. Maybe I'm trying too hard because it seems if I just drive like I normally do- easy but normal (not Mario Andretti like everyone else) acceleration and steady on the gas at cruise, and coasting as much as possible to a stop sign it does best. However I feel if the "Energy Monitor" would show the current charge level of the battery it might help but I'm not sure this graphic is working right.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

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Yes, the little yellow dot is good. It's not necessarily bad though if you don't have a yellow dot. It just means that you didn't regenerate that much power in that 5 minute interval. If you're on the highway, you may not regenerate power at all...no big deal.

As for the stored power: it may or may not fill up or drain, depending on how you're driving. If you're in the middle or at 3/4, you're fine!

Hybrid driving tips:

http://www.lexus.com/hybriddrive/fuel_tips.html

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  • 2 weeks later...
Were you doing a substantial amount of in-city, traffic jams, or downhill driving at the time? What was the weather like? Was it pleasant, and you didn't use the a/c or heat?

NOthing different. Normally we can baby it along with no a/c or heat on and barely manage 50mpg mostly highway. It was a nice day and for no apparent reason the average mpg started rising towards 65mpg, meanwhile the entire bar graph for that 30 minute period showed higher than normal all the way across. The only thing I can think of is that I'd added a bottle of STP fuel injection cleaner a couple days before, and I did take a 20 minute cruise on the freeway at 70mph the day before(43mpg). . We have yet to manage much better than 47 mpg since. I realise that such a spike might be possible if I had just reset the mpg counter but we had 200miles showing at the time so it would have taken quite a feat to bring the average up so quick and that wouldn't affect the 30 minute bar graph anyways.

Not complaining about getting 45mpg but 65 would be even nicer! :rolleyes: even though it was a fluke... We just have to wonder and may never know what was different about that 1 trip out of 15 identical trips.

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