Yesterday, we were stuck on the Garden State Parkway until we passed the cause of the traffic jam - an accident. It took 45 minutes to go appx 6 miles. During this time, I was able to observe the following:
We went into EV mode as we were in stop-n-go traffic. SOC initially was blue, i think it was appx 6 bars. Everything was great until the SOC went purple after appx 8 minutes(understandable as AC was on in ECO mode full blast). At that point, ICE kicked in and started running at appx 1000 rpm(ScanGauge). I figured that ICE would recharge the battery until SOC went into green, and then continue back in EV mode until SOC went back into purple. That didn't happen. ICE ran at appx 1000 rpm for most of the 45 minutes! SOC never went above 3 bars. FE went from 42 mpg to about 35 mpg. Could it be that toyota figured that running the ICE at 1000 rpm continuously to minimally recharge the batteries would use less fuel than if ICE ran at a higher RPM for a shorter duration while recharging the batteries until a green SOC is achieved and then running in EV mode until SOC went back into purple range and then repeating this recharge cycle as necessary? At appx 6-10 miles per hour in stop-n-go traffic, there was minimal brake regen, so that did not help. I look forward to your comments/suggestions.

Mods: Surveillance Front and Rear Cameras for Realtime Display and Recording