Hmm... if you're picking up a larger draw with the voltmeter after startup, but not after "park and go" (no draw in your case - since you are able to do short hops with no ICE at all ) there has to be something to this - whether it's uniform across all prius IIs is still up for debate.

What I saw was in both cases was I was able to do "pulse & glide" (and getting ICE to shut off) immediately, compared to at least 3 minutes after a cold start - suggesting the computer knew the ICE was already warm. But as for the second bar in my "park, restart and go" test... I can't attribute all of that to condition differences (after all, it was the exact same course, hit the lights about the same, about same speed and technique, etc).

I'd be very interested to see your results if you do it again.