Droid13

After years driving a Camry Hybrid, the charge region on the gauge is something new to the experience for me. At first I thought it was just a bit of a gimmick, but I think I'm changing my mind. Having the charge zone as part of the gauge which was not present on the Camry, I'm finding it a lot easier to find that point of glide, by keeping the needle right between the first green eco zone and the charge zone on the right road. I found it hard to find that point by feel on the Camry.

However, that said, I do have a general question for the community. When braking to the point of just lightly pinning the needle into the max charge zone, do you think that suggests that this represents the maximum amount of charge the hybrid system is willing to take and any further increase in braking is just using the mechanical brakes?

UTAS

Actually, braking is mechanical mostly with a resistance drag as the drive motor(s) reverse the energy to generation to the battery bank. It would be difficult to gauge this process without external instruments to measure just when this drag occurs and ceases. However, there is a graphic available on the navigation screen that one can view - it shows how much energy is restored over a driving interval. One could experiment and thereby get an idea how the "charging range" correlates.