Midpack
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
The electric motor is only used to assist the ICE at high speeds/acceleration/grade if it's within it's design charge range. The Prius will not let you drive the traction battery down to no charge. If the battery reaches it's low charge level, you basically have an underpowered but useable ICE car, while the battery is recharged.Given this, if the electric motor/batteries are used to assist the IC engine at high speeds (and/or uphill grades, I assume), how does performance change when the batteries are drawn down to their min level and the electric motor goes offline? Does the IC engine have the reserve capacity to keep the car at 75MPH (or at, say, 60 MPH on an uphill grade), or do you need to back off a bit?
For the Prius, and I suspect other makes, the traction battery is kept in a pretty narrow range of charge. While I've seen several different claims as to what those ranges are, I believe they are normally charged between 40-60% of maximum to prolong battery life as well as allowing "headroom" for regenerative braking. If you drive uphill long enough to reach the low charge level threshold (not very low), the car will not draw from the battery, you'd be driving on ICE only - and the Prius will climb any hill with ICE only albeit without much reserve HP for passing, etc.
I haven't climbed Pikes Peak with either of our hybrids over the past 5 years, but I've never seen either car running on ICE only. It uses EV alone (low speeds, downhill) when possible and both when needed mostly. If there's a red traction battery display or warning, I've never seen it...
Last edited: