Prius seldom runs on batteries alone?

OK I found this other link that actually explains it pretty well, if
anyone cares .
http://www.techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/b-mode.html
Here is a bit copied out of that:
......Enter "B" mode. As in, "trucks use lower gear". By forcing the
wheels
to spin the engine and pump air, a good deal of that energy can be turned
to heating the air going through the engine instead of heating the brake
parts. Since fresh air is always coming into the engine, having it leave
as much warmer air provides a convenient place to dump excess energy.
In a conventional car the wheels push the engine around through the
transmission, but the Prius needs to help that process out a little bit
by actually having its combination of electric motors spin the engine.
In this case, the valve-timing in the Prius engine is advanced to increase
the amount of air taken in and the suction against the throttle flap --
which
uses much more energy than the coasting-in-"D" scenario above......

There is a lot more there that I have not copied here, but in addition to
capturing some of the energy, it is spinning it off in B mode.

Bottom line is to not use it in the hopes of saving more energy.
Tomes

 

Bill - read this link regarding what it does in B Mode:
http://www.techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/b-mode.html
It answered a bunch of questions for me about 5 minutes ago. Basically, B
mode wastes off excess energy by spinning the IC engine. Read on....
Tomes

 

The minimum speed for cruise control has been 25 MPH since cruise control
first appeared on Toyotas. My guess is that speed was chosen to prevent
someone trying to use it in stop-and-go driving.

 

Thanks Tomes! That was illuminating and contained many surprises,
e.g. "When accelerating... D and B produce the same behavior."

Do you know about "the Great Database Fire" that took out Priuschat?
A similar thing happened to one of the chat sites I visit, BoaterTalk.
That's one big downside of chat websites versus group (Usenet) news.
OTOH I suppose Google could discontinue groups so we wouldn't be able
to search back posts any longer.

 

You are welcome, glad to be able to actually contribute something other
than opinion. It is a pretty good read, I just hope it is all correct
.

What is this Priuschat? Or is the question what _was_ Priuschat?
Tomes

 

The page you posted is on a website http://www.techno-fandom.org/~hobbit
with a lot of interesting stuff. I didn't have much time to investigate
but he/she writes (and supports with a picture):

"With summer gasoline in good weather, I have no trouble getting
70 MPG on a country road with light traffic."

I can't wait for summer! Getting > 50 MPG is more fun than driving.

Priuschat.com is a blog site, or whatever you call those things,
where you can post questions and answers. It seems to be the best,
and one of the most active, although there are others.

I find Yahoo groups to be a giant PITA, so I completely abandoned them,
but Yahoo has about a dozen Prius or hybrid "news" groups.

 

"Bill Tuthill" > wrote ...

I gave up on Yahoo groups quickly as well. I will check out this
Priuschat thingy. Thanks. I also agree about the summer thing....
Tomes

 

Gee, wouldn't a set of Dynamic Braking Resistors in front of the
radiator (or a separate cooling fan) work just as effectively and not
sit there spinning the engine?

Just dump the excess energy as heat without wearing down the brakes,
the motor-generator or the engine - It's worked on Diesel Electric
Locomotives for 60+ years...

--<< Bruce >>--

 

If I may ask, what did you find to be the problem? Other than the
adverstisements (which also plague most other Prius sites), what was
the issue(s)? The Yahoo!Groups are mainly email discussion lists, but
you do not have to read/receive/post messages via email but can be a
web-only subscriber. Yahoo has changed the email formatting and web
message archives lately, so if you're a fan of threaded responses
(among other things) you might be happy...

-Michelle, moderator or owner of quite a few Yahoo!Groups...

In general, I recommend (though I'm a moderator on only 2 of those
listed):
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/toyota-prius/
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/Prius-2G/
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/2007_Prius/
http://www.priusonline.com/
http://www.priuschat.com/
http://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/
http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/

or the more appropriate usenet newsgroup: alt.autos.toyota.prius

 

Advertising was only a tiny issue. The big problem for me was the lack of
threaded presentation. One nice thing about photo.net, a non-Usenet BB
I still read, is that all posts on a given topic are on the same webpage,
so you only download once per topic. Even with a broadband Internet link,
Yahoo groups are just too slow for me.

Aha, maybe I should check it out again. The problem with subscribing
by email is that Yahoo groups were, maybe stilla re, a huge source
of spam, so giving my good email address was inadvisable, and my bad
email address (ccreekin at Yahoo) is slow and hard to navigate; it is
basically unusable during the business day.

From reading the Yahoo descriptions, I could not tell which to read.
The last two sound like exactly the same thing. Any hints?

My news service doesn't get that one (yet). Thanks, Michelle!

 

I would suggest either a digest format (probably the New which is
easier to reply through, but the "traditional" is now threaded as
well), or choose the "no email" subscription option and just read/post
through the message archives at the web site. In the message
archives, "group by topic" may work for you.

Although the groups I listed are all moderated, that will keep the
spam down on the lists, but doesn't keep the spammers from joining...
Yahoo doesn't make available the actual email address of a poster or a
member on the website, but since it is an email list if you post your
address will go out to those subscribed in that fashion... So it is
possible that some spammers may join, just to scrape addresses out of
the daily digests. A throwaway account or a good spam filter may help
here.

toyota-prius (remember the dash!) is the older group of all the ones I
listed (including PC and PoL), having migrated over to a Yahoo!Group
when Yahoo bought out eGroups. Discussion is open to all models of
Prius (since they share many parts in common). These days I'd say
that NHW11 and NHW20 traffic is about equal, and the occasional NHW10
traffic is diverted to its own group (Mk1_Prius). (*disclaimer* - I
am a moderator on this list, which mainly means approving posts of new
members (i.e. weeding out the spam and trolls), banning spammers, and
occasionally helping members with membership/subscription problems.)

Prius-2G focuses on the NHW20 model Prius (2004-current model years in
the US). When the NHW20 was introduced, a new group was formed to
discuss just this new model and its new features... Prius-2G is the
moderated version of that new group (that everyone moved to once the
new group (2004-prius) lost its only owner/moderator and became over-
run with spam).

2007_Prius is a quieter version of Prius-2G. Not as much traffic as
Prius-2G, but stays on-topic more often. (2007_Prius renames itself
each year when the new model year is out...)

Myself, I subscribe to most Yahoo!Groups on a given topic, but just
choose the "No email" option. At least when needed I can go to the
message archives and search around... But for the more-populated
Prius groups, although I read online, I still get the messages via
email so that I can archive them myself for easier searching.
(Although the Yahoo!Groups Message search is now vastly improved, it
still leaves a lot to be desired...)

I've had spotty news service for quite a while, so I've resorted to
using http://groups.google.com/ for all of my news feeds. However,
the site changes every so often, and the posting can be a bit clunky.

Google is trying to offer email lists similar to the Yahoo!Groups, and
lists them right next to the usenet newsgroups... but I haven't found
much traffic in the GoogleGroups Prius lists yet.