Hi!

I am the proud owner of a new Camry Hybrid and enjoying getting to know it day by day.

At issue: when I make a stop, eg at a traffic light, the display indicating whether the electric motor or the gas motor is active shows no activity going on on both motors. In the meantime, the consumption gage shows a 30 l. per km (this is Canada) gas consumption, the maximum available on that gage. Sometimes, but not always, the needle will come down in the eco zone.

This leads me to conclude that city driving, especially when frequent stops are involved, uses more gas that I had been expecting.

Does anyone have any comment to offer?

Thanks,

Georges Béchard
Ottawa
Canada

 

You may find these links useful reading:

How come I can't go into EV mode sometimes?

25% of the time, never goes into EV mode

The TCH will show consumption when stopped if:
a) the ICE or catalytic converter is too cold
b) traction battery needs charging due to low SOC
c) ECO is off, and ICE temp is not "hot enough" for optimum cabin heating
d) the TCH is not in stage 4 yet.

 

GNB — The ICE (internal combustion engine) icon appears in the display only when it's actually sending power to the wheels. If the ICE is running when the car is stopped, the icon does not appear, and in this case, as nash says, it's running for some other reason. Similarly, the battery arrows only appear if power is flowing in either direction between the battery and the wheels {via the electric motor-generators (MGs)}. An arrow from the battery to the wheels represents battery power supplementing ICE power; an arrow from the wheels to the battery represents regenerative braking charging the battery. [There's always electrical power shuttling between the two MGs and/or the battery, but it is not all shown in the simplified display. Indeed, the car can't work without electrical power flowing to one or other of the MGs.] If the ICE is running while you are stationary, your fuel consumption is infinite L/100 km — hence the maximum possible reading of 30 L/100 km shown under these circumstances.

Stan

 

Note that this is not as bad as it may seem on the surface. In terms of L/100Km, this is infinite only because you are not moving - division by zero. So in terms of consumption of distance, it seems enormous. In terms of actual quantity of gas consumed over time (assuming you are not sitting and idling in your driveway), it's not very much.
Now that the cold weather is here, I'm seeing this all the time as well, rarely actually seeing ICE shutdown at stoplights when its cold. In warmer weather, its fantastic - always shutting down completely when stopped, and easily switching into EV mode while driving below 60KPH. Suffer through the winter, and be prepared to be amazed in the spring!
As a side note, I'm also in Ottawa - which part of town are you in?

 

Keep in mind that it's an energy FLOW meter. In other words, if the battery is near full and it's cold outside, the engine still has to idle to warm itself (and the cat converter). If the battery is half charged or lower, it'll charge the battery at the same time and you'll see an arrow from the engine to the battery. If not, then the engine will just idle with no energy sent anywhere. It's in this state that you see what you've described.

 

I don't know if the display is different in the Prius, but in the Camry you NEVER see an energy flow from the ICE to the battery - even when you know that's what's happening. When stopped and the engine is charging the battery, all you see is a static display with no energy flows and the FE meter pegged at max. (Speaking of the MFD, not the fancy-shmansy energy display from the NAV system - which you don't get in the Canadian TCH (sorry, did I type that out loud?))

 

Thanks Randy for your useful comments. I was directed to a thread on this question which shows it is of interest to many THC new owners.

I own a Metallic Grey 2008 THC, and live in the market area.

I was nice to-day to start the motor at -15 C without missing a beat!

Cheers,

Georges

 

 

I actually had a similar situation this week while sitting in a drive thru. The engine was warm, and no matter what I did the gas engine would not turn off. What I did to turn it off was to turn the climate control OFF. It was roughly 30 degrees (F) outside, so I had the heat blowing. When I turned the heat back on, the engine turned back on. I turned the climate control off/on again 2 more times just to see if it was a fluke- but no... Climate control on = gas engine running. Climate control off = no gas engine.

This got me thinking/experimenting: After starting the car in the morning, even when it's cold outside, I have been able to stop the gas engine from running at stoplights if I simply turned the climate control completely off.

This works even when the engine is not at normal operating temperature- but it does have to be out of the blue zone.

 

I hardly ever leave the fans going beyond the minimum necessary for either a) defogging/defrosting for visibility (primary use) and b) warming up when I'm really feeling frozen. But usually I consider being inside out of wind/rain/snow/etc to be a sufficient improvement over outside, and since whatever I'm wearing is generally something I can bear to be outside in, I should be fine. But yeah whenever the battery is low on charge, running heat/AC will eventually (if not right away) cause the ICE to kick in to power it. In fact I tend to find myself specifically turning on the fan (to low setting) only when I'm under way anyway just to avoid it. Figured this one out last year sometime--on top of the basic fundamental that AC or heat is going to reduce FE....