I'm with yticolev, and disagree with the article on startup. The idea of sort of gunning it to use the engine to accelerate from a full stop is just simply out there. I know from my Edge that is not a light crossover, that from the standstill it takes a huge amount of fuel to get the car going, but I can easily get into the 40-50mpg fuel use range when coasting at city driving speeds. It makes much more sense to let the battery take the hit and power the electric motor to get the car initially going. They don't use small AA batteries inside these cars, the traction battery is quite large and you won't drain it just by letting the electric motor do the work to start you moving. As well, if you think of it, the idea of regenerative braking is that you recapture the momentum energy when you slow down and stop at the next set of lights. That system is at least 70-80% efficient, so the next time you slow down and stop you are topping back up the battery to use when you start next.
One thing that I have heard is that your hybrid system likes to keep the battery charge at or around the 50-60% mark. This is good for the battery as it will make it last a whole lot longer. I have some of those EGO electric yard tools with the 56v lithium batteries. The by design will discharge themselves to the 50% mark if you don't use them for a period of about 2-3 weeks. I had a good chat with one of the engineers who explained why and his suggestion was when you will extend the life of the battery if you top up charge it about 1 hour before you use the tool to about 75% and don't run the battery down below the 20% mark. These are effectively the same type of battery inside the Niro.
With that knowledge, you shouldn't really play games to try and get the battery level indicator inside the car to get up high as it will defeat what the logic electronics inside the car are trying to do. When driving on a flat at speed, the processor brains inside the car can decide to run the engine at the magical 1800-2000rpm that gives the least wear to the motor and gets the most fuel efficiency out of it. It will direct some of the power to the wheels and the rest over to topping up the battery. If the engine is getting that 50-60mpg efficiency, then why would you mind? The last thing I want it to force the engine to have to rev up and be in the 3-6mpg range even if it's for only 15-20 seconds as that will use far more fuel than it running for 2 minutes at cruising speed with 50-60mpg efficiency.