New Car Break in Recommendation

[Gerhard_Corolla]

22 hours ago, AndrueC said:

The 1.8 is a bit different in this respect. It will often get to within one bar of fully charged. Different battery types, different power requirements I suppose.

Indeed, the power difference, and the battery's properties and materials could play an important part in the optimization of its charge. The 'issue' is that Toyota's maintenance personal says the Battery should be charged more frequently on the high percentages...

 

Who knows!

 

Gladly we have a 10 year 'extended' warranty if you keep up with the yearly maintenance schedules.

[Gerhard_Corolla]

22 hours ago, Cyker said:

I don't know about the older ones but the newer ones are very keen on keeping the battery charge around 50%.

It will go over if you're on a steep downhill or able to brake a lot, or are going at higher speeds, but if you are going at speeds where MG2 can push the car on its own it will continuously cycle between the ICE and MG2 and bounce around the 50% mark.

It's actually genius, and partly why the newer hybrids are able to get higher mpgs, as Toyota finally realized there is no point in charging the battery very much; Firstly, keeping the battery around 50% as much as possible greatly extends its life. Second, as EV people like to point out, all the energy comes from the petrol, so the best strategy is for the car to run the ICE at its most efficient rpm and loading to hit that magic 41% efficiency, using that to move the car and dumping the excess into the battery. As soon as the battery gets enough charge (Basically above 50%) it wants to switch off the ICE and switch to MG2, and will do so as soon as your speed drops below a certain amount or if you lift off for even a second, so minimize the amount of time it runs on the ICE.

You can force it to charge the battery more by keeping the powerband in the Eco+ band, but there isn't really much point unless you know you're going to be stuck in traffic or going to be somewhere you'd rather run on MG2 as much as possible in the near future.

That said, one thing I'd change about my Mk4 is change the EV button (Which is literally useless) to a Charge button, so I can explicitly force the car to charge the battery up for those specific reasons, as one thing I really really hate about the car is when it fires up the ICE to charge the battery while I'm stationary in traffic. (I suspect it's not so bad in the 4-cylinder Corollas, but in the 3-cylinder Yaris it's reaaallly obnoxious!)

 

Nice chunk of information, thanks!

 

It is indeed an annoying sound! I think that having Port and Direct fuel injection, sounds way more loudly than just a regular direct fuel injection engine; way less than a diesel engine, but it sounds 'dieselesque', specially when the ICE starts after traveling with the EM or standing still and starts to charge the Battery, as you said...

 

I'm still getting accustomed to the sound when the ICE starts and it doesn't have the grunt to pull the car decisively, so I try to accelerate gradually to bring up the speed of the car at the maximum allowed and avoid this phase. It doesn't seem to impact the fuel economy and the engine doesn't sound like it doesn't have enough amount of power to pull the car...

[AndrueC]

My 1.8 seems very sensible as far as displayed Battery charge goes. Mostly sits between 3 and five bars. Occasionally goes to all bars lit. It's noticeable that when all bars are lit the car has a lot more pep and it's more inclined to switch the ICE off.

[Kental]

As a previous driver of a plug-in Kia Niro, does the brake feel go to pot when the Battery is full as no ability to regen?

[nielshm]

A short high rev acceleration won't hurt anything. It's not a high power run down the German Autobahn. 

At the Porsche factory, every single engine are hooked up to a dyno, to see if max. output are within specs. That means maximum revs with a brand new engine, but only for a short time. I know a performance car and Toyota are different, but both engines still have to same kind of components that needs to be "broken in". 

[TonyHSD]

14 hours ago, Kental said:

As a previous driver of a plug-in Kia Niro, does the brake feel go to pot when the battery is full as no ability to regen?

In Toyota brakes feel ok no matter what once the discs and pads are bedded in properly. In bev and phev this process takes longer and that might be a reason to feel the car has almost no physical brakes once regenerative braking is off, this was the case with my girlfriend ioniq and for a very long time (2000 miles). Now the car is at around 7k miles and brakes has improved. That is the only break in thing with those types of cars👌

[Cyker]

As the regen-braking decreases as the Battery gets fuller the car will start using (actual) engine-braking more so you don't feel the reduction in braking like you would e.g. in an EV.