What I learnt from charging my Prius - Page 8

 



Not at all.  Where did you get that I said anything of the sort?

The energy management system of the Prius is carefully designed and
constructed, and disturbing it could negatively affect gas mileage.  
Certainly disturbing it in the way you describe would; the energy
storage unit (which gets its energy from where? GASOLINE, thank you)
does more to extend the power you get from the gasoline, than it takes
away by its presence.

 




Well, from gasoline and, of course, from a tailwind, braking or going
downhill.
 

 



Tailwind and going downhill puts energy into the car.  Going downhill,
of course, presumes that you used gasoline to go UPhill in the first
place.  And both tailwind and downhill affect ANYTHING on wheels,
regardless of its energy source or lack thereof.  A soapbox derby racer
benefits from both of those.

Braking, though, is way different.  Braking puts ZERO energy into the
system.  On a Prius, braking recovers, doesn't create, energy--and then
it recovers only SOME of the gasoline-based energy that was expended in
making the car go.

The only actual source of energy that motivates the Prius to go out of
your garage and drive around town and go back into the garage is
gasoline.

That the Prius has a system to capture SOME of the kinetic energy
available from braking, and expend it later, is irrelevant.  The energy
it recaptures came from the gasoline itself, and it doesn't come near to
recapturing all the energy that the gasoline went INTO the system with.

 




Trust me when I tell you I understand your reasoning but it's the ability to
capture and store energy that sets the Prius apart from the conventional car
and regardless of the source, wind, braking or coasting, the Prius has the
ability to run on that energy in it's stored electric state.  If I too
wanted to split hairs, I could argue that a Volt plugged into my house is
coal fired because most of my electricity comes from coal.
 

 



That the Prius happens to use electricity and batteries as the method to
store recaptured energy, doesn't make it an electric car.

And yet, stupid people who want SO hard to believe they have an electric
car, think otherwise.  They're ignorant, of course.