Monday, September 20, 2010

Three Prius Tricks

I'm am an owner of European Prius II (2006) and want to share some tips which I find useful, but which took me some time to grasp.

  1. You can go as fast as 182 km/h on Prius if you step on the accelerator (driving at 180) and then the road starts going downhill. It takes the system several seconds to adjust to reduced necessary torque and until then it keeps accelerating as if you're going up-hill leading to 182 (I did this several times already).
    You can get 181 km/h on the plain road by stepping on the accelerator, but that's not as interesting.
  2. Don't use "B" mode to regenerate more energy (I was doing it on every traffic light for half a year because of many contradicting posts in the forums). Read this and apply brakes gently to regenerate more. Use "B" mode only when going down-hill (that's the rare case when you should follow the manual and you will do it right).
  3. If you don't like Pulse&Glide technique then at least use Glide mode to reduce the breaking force when approaching a distant red light.
  4. Navigation without GPS applies to Prius II as well! I noticed it in the underground parking and the system information screen has some kind of bearing information (displayed in degrees) which, combined with distance traveled, can replace GPS for some short distances.
  5. How to get to the system information screen in Prius II - get to the display screen and follow the instructions here (it's not on the Navigation Voice screen, at least not in Prius II).

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