This seems to happen way too much, and I'm wondering if anyone has any theories as to what my car is up to. (I apologize ahead of time for the quality of the following images; I was trying to capture them quickly with my cell phone's camera before traffic starting moving again.)

Here is the situation: I was returning home the other night on the 101 freeway and came to a stop in heavy traffic due to some lane closures caused by some construction activity. While at a full stop, the ICE started running (which results in a 0 MPG reading on the Consumption guage), yet no energy transfer is shown taking place on the Energy screen:





I know this can happen when the system is first started in order to warm up the ICE. Yet I had already traveled five miles when this happened and the outside temperature was 72º:





Why would the ECU decide to just happily waste gasoline in this situation? This has happened to me before and watching that consumption guage sit at 0 MPG for 30 seconds or so really irks me!

 

Were you running the A/C or heat by any chance? Maybe your car got cold and it kicked in to heat it up?

 

I had this happen to me many times, usually after some spirited highway driving, coming to the dead stop. No idea why but if I had to speculate here is my list of most likely reasons:
1) fussy logic decided that I'm in a rush and need good peformance, keeps the engine running so I can accelerate faster and won't be complaining the car is a dog
2) hot temperature inside electric drive due to boosting car speed. Since starting from dead stop requires most energy, the ICE is running to relieve electric motor from pushing the car alone and let it cool off
3) soaking up the heat, the ICE's head is hot due to fast driving, rest of the engine is much cooler, engine keeps on running to dissipate heat from cylinders and pistons
4) something to do with polution and catalytic converter
The energy meter is just graphic aproximation to what happens with the drive system and it's not 100% accurate. If you had your car in "D" and the car was stopped, MG had to be spinning and generating electricity, there is no way around it. I don't know if there was enough "juice" to actually charge the battery. Sometimes putting the car in "P" will force the ICE to shutt down quicker, also everything goes back to normal if the car sits in traffic for more than few minuttes.

 

I have noticed the same situation with mine. I have acutally seen the MPG meter at 0, MPH at 0 and ICE not running as well. Does not happen often but I have noticed it a few times in the first 300 miles of ownership. Seems strange.

Alan

 

I can understand this happening in the first half mile or so to warm up the ICE. But there were no extreme conditions in the situation I described above to cause it to happen at an unusual time. I'd already traveled for five mostly freeway miles, it was a cool evening, the SOC of the battery was relatively high, I was using the auto climate system in the ECO mode with A/C on...

I find it puzzling.

 

This has happened to me. Battery is full and engine is warm. Sometimes it wont go into EV mode when going under 40 mph and foot is not on the gas.

 

I am having the same problem, I bought my hybrid a little over a week ago and I have 900 miles on it. I drive around 50 miles to work and the same thing will happen after I get to work. I have no regrets in buying the car, its just strange why the car would do this.