Quote:
|
Originally Posted by caps04
I drove 160 miles recently on a freeway and throughout, the battery was close to 90% charged. Wish there was a way to atleast get the battery take over completely for small stretches.
|
It's better for your battery in the long run if it's not always getting depleted, so having the charge stay at 90% is perfectly healthy, especially on a freeway. At those speeds your gasoline engine is actually providing almost all the power to the wheels, and anything left over will be used to top off the battery. Unfortunately the battery is relatively small (compared to an EV) so even if it were to switch to battery operation at high speed it wouldn't last long at all, then your motor would turn on again and recharge the battery as well as power the wheels, causing a considerable hit in MPG.
The only times when the battery is really useful all by itself is at lower speed cruising and light acceleration. Apparently as your engine breaks in it gets a bit easier to hold it in EV mode for longer runs, but again it's not necessarily more efficient to do all your driving on the battery pack and then let the engine recharge the battery, sometimes it's better to let the engine fire up and generate the electricity the vehicle needs on demand.