well, the prius idleing to charge the battery is basically the same as what the hch.ii does. the only difference is that the prius can do it while in park while in the hch.ii you have to be autostopped. i encounted this the other day. while dropping a friend off, we were chatting a bit in the car with the a/c on and being powered by the battery. then the battery level dropped to about 1 bar and the engine kicked on to charge the battery. i had never seen this happen before and it was pretty cool.

at a full charge, the battery should be able to run the a/c for a good while, maybe 30 minutes or more. the electric motor on the a/c is pretty efficient.

there are 2 a/c outlets: one in the dash and one in the armrest and i'm not certain what the max wattages are.

Yes, Neil. That happened to me Friday, too, while I was autostopped. For the first time. I know the SoC was at 2 bars. My guess is that it was about to go to 1 bar, and that's when the ICE started to allow forced charging of the hybrid battery. It was an odd feeling, but made sense. I think it's cool, also.

Steve

STOP terrorism - Drive a HYBRID

Vehicles:
350 miles a week ------------ 2006 HCH II, Magnetic Pearl, w/NAVI (born on May 25, 2006)
350 miles a month ---------- 2003 Mazda Tribute ES-V6
350 miles a year (for now) - 1986 Mercedes 560SL

wow awesome 30 minutes for ac is plenty enough time to chill in the car if you have to wait for someone to pick up!!!

hm so when parking, what can one do to use ac without wasting too much gas? when pulling on the ebrake does that activiate autostop too?

i got around 20 km a liter when i drove a civic 5 spd using advanced hypermiler techniques
and now I drive a salvage nwh20 prius that gets almost to 25 km/l with 195,000 km to date.