chromedome

Anyone know what's being used, either the electric motor regeneration or the disc brakes, to slow the car down at highway speeds vs. town driving? I can't find thus info anywhere in the manual. I'm wondering why the brakes feel a bit inconsistent in town driving and there's not much regen if I let the car coast in Eco mode.

I caned the big beast up and down some hills in Sport mode and it's the first time I've smelled the brakes. Loads of fun feeling that electric motor kick going uphill I also used the manual shifter to keep the gear in S3 or S2 for downhill stretches, I wonder if the engine solely is used for engine braking or if the electric motors also have a stronger regen rate.

jollick

I know the hydraulic brakes work very little on the ES300h, the computer takes care of it. I have heard that the brakes only come into play at speeds below 5 mph or in a panic stop. Based on posts from other Toyota Hybrid owners the brake shoes usually last 100,000 miles or more. You eventually get used to the feel of the brake petal.

atoyota

There's more info about Toyota Synergy Drive (same thing) than LHD. The planetary motion of the motor revs up more when you apply the brakes as it tries to capture more energy thru regeneration. I looked all this up when I got my first Toyota hybrid. I'll look for the links and videos when I get back to my desktop.

gfr1

If you call up the proper screen on your nav screen, you can see when electrons are streaming towards the battery (from the drive wheels), which indicates that the battery is being replenished and therefor, substituting for brake energy. And, in you instrument cluster, when the needle gets into the "regen" area, it is substituting re-charge for brake energy.

chromedome

Wikipedia's your pal All this info is on the Hybrid Synergy Drive page. It looks like the brakes are rarely used when braking and the motor-generator (MG2) does most of the work.

When a gear is manually selected for engine braking, MG2 charges the battery while MG1 spins up the engine to create drag. That explains why the engine RPM shoots up when I'm using S2 or S3 when going down a steep slope. It still feels a bit unnatural compared to a normal car but it's a magnificent system.

atoyota

Here's one of the videos I promised: "This footage was recorded on Nov 29, 2007 at a Hybrid event held by Toyota Sunnyvale in Sunnyvale, CA, USA.
It uses a planetary gear to divert power. Power can come from the internal combustion engine (ICE = blue handle) or the Motor Generator 1 (MG1 = yellow disc) and Motor Generator 2 (orangle handle). MG2 drives the wheels directly (represented by cranking the orange handle before the reduction gears) or the momentum of the car pushes the wheel to spin MG2 to recapture energy during braking (represented by cranking the black handle after the reduction gears). MG1 (yellow disc) can spin the planetary gear (green) while the wheels (black) and MG2 (orange) are stationary, which in turn spin the ICE (blue) before gasoline is injected to the ICE. That pre-spinning of the ICE to operating RPM allows the ICE to be started and shut off at will with reduced air pollution concern (represented by cranking the blue handle, it should only turn in one direction, the model is flawed). MG1 (yellow) can spin backward or forward to redirect power to the wheels (this model does not have a crank handle for the yellow disc, a model flaw again because MG1 must be spun actively to control the output of the HSD).

Visit http://www.wind.sannet.ne.jp/m_matsu/... to play with a simulator."