Thanks - I know next to nothing about electric or hybrid design.
All cars have motor rpms and tire revolutions - whether manual, automatic, hydro, ICE, hybrid or electric.. and therefore they all have a ratio between the two motions. At one extreme of that ratio you use less fuel - but put more stress on the the motor.
I get your point though, that with a hybrid like the Prius, the driver’s strategy for obtaining optimal fuel efficiency would be much more complicated than with an ICE, and would require a keen understanding of the design and what conditions trigger the ICE to kick in or lay back.
With a Prius type hybrid its all how light you can accelerate using the least amount of energy to do so. That and since air resistance is log log to speed you have to drive slow. Prius crush slow city driving at steady speeds. You will see 100+ mpg at ,35 mph and steady speeds. It’s the start stop start that eats up fuel.this is where regen braking system shines it takes about 600 watt hours to bring a full sized sedan up to 60 mph same amount to bring it to a halt that in a normal car is pure heat in the brake pads. Hybrids capture up to 80% of that so do EVs that’s how they double city miles that and being able to run the ICE at its higher eff points more of the time. My Telsa uses 150 ish wh/mi in the city so just the braking energy from 60 to zero is four miles worth of steady cruising in a EV. This is also why EV absolutely crush city driving I use one tenth the cost and energy in my Tesla vs the S60 of identical size. Plus the Telsa is less per month than the S60 so its capital expense is half what I already paid for the S60 and the only reason I still own the Volvo sunk cost