Self Charging

[ghlewis6]

Hi All,
I seem to be getting no self charge or increase in the battery when the engine is trying to charge, it does it for brake regeneration fine but when the battery runs out completely and when on road and it says it’s self charging there never seems to be increase in the battery?
Is this normal ?
Many thanks
Gavin

 

[Jto]

Yes

 

[ghlewis6]

So even though the image on the dash shows the engine as Charging the battery it never actually puts anything in there ?

 

[Jto]

On the info screen you can press setting then at the bottom you see auto med high it you pick high this will charge the battery but you will use a lot of petrol. You will need to be over 35mph at a steady speed to up any thing in check the user manua.

 

[CAMBRIDGE COWBOY]

I was pondering this earlier today, if I leave home with a full tank and full battery and have charge mode on Medium, can I assume the engine won't charge the battery (but regen will continue to do so)?
My thinking being that on a longer drive, as the engine isn't looking to use petrol to charge the battery until it dips below 50%, that the car should be a little more economical?
Clearly I'm brand new to this game so happy to be told my thinking is bananas

 

[Jto]

I was pondering this earlier today, if I leave home with a full tank and full battery and have charge mode on Medium, can I assume the engine won't charge the battery (but regen will continue to do so)?
My thinking being that on a longer drive, as the engine isn't looking to use petrol to charge the battery until it dips below 50%, that the car should be a little more economical?
Clearly I'm brand new to this game so happy to be told my thinking is bananas

Medium is 50% before charge from the engine, you find when you have it set there are marks on the battery charge indication.

 

[JimD]

Just an observation (I don't drive a hybrid): surely there's no point to charging the battery from the engine? It just introduces loss of efficiency in the charger, battery and electric drive train when you eventually use it. Better to use all the petrol engine to move the car and just use brake regen to improve the overall efficiency.

 

[a1970man]

I just leave in in auto.
On long drives I find that it retains a 80% charge which I use once within EV range of home.
I do help it out by trying to get the charing going on long downhill stretches.
I don't see any point in setting it to med or high on the journey, the tank is tiny as it is and I like to make the most of the 37L of unleaded.

 

[TWbm]

The regen is nothing like as powerful as you get on a full hybrid. It will, in my experience, stretch the 31 miles to around 34 if you use the odometer to check, but PHEV is only right for you if the vast majority of your daily driving is no more than the 30-odd miles you get on a charge.

After much buggering about with switching the EV on / off and changing the charge rate from default, I've come to the conclusion that the most economical way to use the car is EV for the local runs and leave it in Auto for long ones. My 10K long term average is 65mpg.

 

[Deleted member 3150]

Hi All,
I seem to be getting no self charge or increase in the battery when the engine is trying to charge, it does it for brake regeneration fine but when the battery runs out completely and when on road and it says it’s self charging there never seems to be increase in the battery?
Is this normal ?
Many thanks
Gavin

My observation is that in normal charge mode this is correct, once depleted it oscillates around zero to perhaps a couple of miles. This I think is because normal runs the petrol engine at its most efficient usu ing battery quite heavily. In Medium or high charge modes in the settings, (warning they reset each time you turn car off and default to normal), it try’s to keep battery charge about half full or high, to fully recharge.

 

[MowerMan65]

That's normal. You really don't want to be burning petrol to charge the battery (although you can force it to do so)

That's the point of a PLUG-IN hybrid. You use grid power instead of generating it by burning petrol at 25% efficiency.

Use EV mode around town, where all the accelerating/decelerating that really kills fuel consumption is done using the battery.

Auto mode for long journeys at speed, where the battery doesn't get used anyway - the battery charge will generally decrease slowly as it will only be used for accelerating at low speed, or for such things as overtaking.

Switch the display to 'hybrid info' and watch the ammeter while you drive. It's possible to pull hundreds of amps at over 300 volts out of the battery - that's power that is NOT coming out of the petrol tank, and will be replaced at very low cost when you next plug in.