I drive 2 miles each way to my local gym just about every morning. I wonder if it is wise to use EV Mode. New to hybrid so wondering what you all think. Thanks

 

Following.

 

Thanks. Love the car so far. Absent a further negative comment, I'm going to give EV Mode a try for a week or so. I'll update the thread after the test.

 

I don't think you can stay in EV mode very long on a 350h...unless you're driving super slow or everything is downhill.

 

Copy & Paste.....
How do the hybrid driving modes change my driving experience?

If you're driving in an area where you need to be quiet, press the EV button to run the electric motor only. EV Mode allows you to operate your vehicle as a fully electric vehicle at speeds up to about 25 mph for a limited range. When EV Mode is initiated, the vehicle self-checks several conditions (including the hybrid system and coolant temperature, the battery is sufficiently charged, acceleration speed and pedal positioning) and only if conditions line up will the vehicle then enter EV Mode. If any of these requirements are compromised, your vehicle will return to Normal Mode and display a message that reads, EV Mode currently not available.

Please click

here

to view a video.

 

It will automatically turn off EV mode if you accelerate hard or go beyond the limits of the traction motor.

One of the things I use it for is changing the order of cars in our driveway, I use EV mode to pull the car out while my wife swaps the other car around -- In the NX I can do this without the engine starting.

 

Just let the car do it's thing. Trying to force EV mode won't work, as others have said here. I've tried but the computer just overrides everything, which is likely a good thing.

 

Early automatic transmissions did not have very good control of shift points nor
did they react consistently to throttle changes. Modern electronically controlled
perform much better and enable much better performance/economy. It is mostly
pointless to row through the gears to improve on the mapping already at work.

The EV mode is similar, early Prius models could be "hacked" by the driver to
briefly improve the MPG's (and blocking traffic..." but the newest Hybrids do a
much better job of switching between drive modes and most of our efforts to
"hypermile" are just wasting time. Other than Hospital Quiet Zones there is not
much justification to trying to outthink the computer.

 

Ev mode is pretty gimmicky in the 350h. As you saw in the earlier post, it only works under very certain conditions and doesn’t last long at all.

I too just turn it on for fun when I’m switching cars around in the driveway but if you try to drive past a certain speed or accelerate hard or go more than a few blocks, the engine will kick on, and it will go into normal mode.

There’s no harm at all and using it. like I said, it’s just kind of fun and gimmick to turn on and be quiet for just a few seconds of capability.

 

My 450h+ ...Normal Mode is EV, with a full charge and a short drive if I manually put it in Hybrid Mode, the next time I fired it up, it back in EV Mode.

There are times when I wished I gotten the 350h (price) but living in southern California with our gas prices and the fact that we have a Solar Generation on our home, we drive for free 95% of the time (EV). Nothing is free, I think of it as prepaid as it is built in to the price of the car and solar array previously purchased. It I didn't have solar on the roof of the house, I would have been more than happy with the 350h. It's such a nice car and much more improved over the 2015 NX300h we had before.

EV Mode is very quiet once you get above the pedestrian warning speed of around 23 MPH.

 

grass isn’t always greener. In your model ev mode is great. If I lived in CA I’d get the 450 or a Tesla- enjoy your 450. It’s a beautiful model. We would’ve gotten one here but it was an extra 4 to 6 month wait