How much petrol can be refilled after driving to empty

[jaapv]

It starts the car up through the 12V battery and will register there is fuel in the tank, I would be highly surprised if it did not start the ICE right away.

 

[maby]

By "it starts the car through the 12v battery" - I assume that you are referring to booting the computers, aren't you? The 12v battery plays no part in spinning up the engine, does it?

 

[jaapv]

No it couldn't - it is too small.

 

[gwatpe]

Have posted this on another thread, so will include it here as well.

Have finally had the opportunity to fully test the fuel system.

Here is a start sceen. No battery and no petrol and no ranges.

The total range has been a mystery for a few months and various forum members have offered snippets of info, but how the fuel system allows the driver to access what is available has been somewhat of a mystery.

Decided to bite the bullet and run the car completely out of petrol and actually record what happened.

The display above was the start of the empty sequence.

The manual states that as fuel is running low, that at 7 L remaining, the fuel icon starts to flash slowly. As the fuel gets to 5 L the icon flashes faster. At some later point the total range goes to dashes.

From the point the icon started to flash, I drove another 2 + 3/4 hours, for a total of 165km after the battery had been depleted. The car operated in parallel and series hybrid mode for about 100km before locking in on series hybrid mode. I had LIMP mode activate. No Turtle appeared. Could only drive at 20-30kph.

Did not Panic.

Emptied my reserve 10L tank into the car, and at about 9L, the car ICE started by itself. Emptied the entire 10L to the car. Servo was not far away, and managed to add an additional 36.5L petrol to the tank.

Have confirmed that the tank is at least 45L.

There are many options available to use all the petrol and it seems the design is ultra conservative with the fuel tank gauge. My estimate is that the tank has not 7L remaining but closer to 10L or more remaining. This does seem a bit excessive, but at least I now know what my car does. Shame this is not somewhere in the manual.

PHEV has a working range of 700-800km with my driving style on a full battery and petrol tank.

I hope others will benefit from this experiment I ran on my PHEV