Wayne's Newest Vid

Completely incorrect! I am treating them EXACTLY as I want to be treated by them.

This is like a bank robber, demanding that others in front of him in line, also draw guns and threaten tellers, so he can get to his business faster.

 

Yeah. I'm puzzled too. I'm not a newbie. It seems counter to the practice widely repeated here (and in the 5 stages document) of limiting HV battery use. I'd be curious to hear Wayne's reason for accelerating on EV.

Agree completely. Wayne is the master but yeah, I want to make sure I'm either not pissing people off around me and not a traffic hazard. I only P&G when nobody's behind me.

 

I believe it is because it is inefficient to fire the engine earlier and what energy you use in acceleration you regain in regen braking at the end of your glide. Does that make sense? I've read about the technique before but promptly forgot the premise because it was mind numbingly slow.

 

Did you see a different version of the video? In the version I saw, he was paying attention to traffic behind, and tuning the advice accordingly.

 

I figured I try doing the delayed engine firing this morning on my commute.. and yea... I was carefully accelerating to about 15-16 until I fired up the ICE. (going pretty high on the EV doing so)

.... and it seems to have improved my overall mileage... not by much.. but there was nonetheless a little improvement.

indeed a lot of us were taught to use the ICE to mostly accelerate and use the EV to maintain speed... but knowing Wayne and his history... I gotta trust him on this one... just make sure to always be aware of your surroundings.. and do it when it's safe to do so.

i'm gonna have to say being stuck in slow morning traffic also helped play apart of this result.. but this was nice to see:

 

Trung, make sure that once you fire the engine and are accelerating with ICE on that you are not drawing from the HV pack. I think this is critical for making this technique work otherwise you will have a hard time recovering all of your energy used in EV acceleration. I'm trying to find the thread where I read about this. I'm going off memory now and I'm kinda old.

 

Wayne is working from a much better understanding of the HSD and its efficiencies, and lack thereof, than most of us mere mortals. And it shows in his results, and those of his students.

Note that Wayne is advocating only the initial acceleration on battery, not traveling any significant distance in this mode. We have discouraged many from trying to stay in battery or EV for extended distances, which does not conflict with his advice.

Note that his speed threshold (16-18 mph) represents one-quarter of the kinetic energy of a common street speed (say 35 mph), and 7-9% of the kinetic energy of highway speed. Therefore he intends to gain the rest of the kinetic energy from the ICE.

A Prius ICE normally transfers much of its power to the wheels through the mechanical path, and a smaller portion through the less efficient electrical path. The actual split varies with conditions, being most efficient when MG1 is at or near 0 RPM, and least efficient when the wheels are near 0 RPM, i.e. during initial acceleration. The basic minimum power wastage just to have the ICE spinning at all is fairly high, much higher than that of the electric propulsion.

So I believe that in certain conditions, the multiple conversion loss involved in storing energy into the battery, then retrieving it later, is still better than having the high-loss ICE running to power a low-power action. And Wayne has a better feel for these tradeoffs than just about anyone else.

I can easily accelerate from a stop to Wayne's threshold without losing any bars, or sometimes losing a single bar. But the bars start falling quickly if creeping traffic causes the car to stay in battery mode for many blocks.

The thread over at CleanMPG reveals otherwise. On the 26 mile tour on the 2nd day, 8 students broke 100 mpg. Wayne's cohort in crime, a ringer in an original Honda Insight, broke 150 mpg.

 

All I can say is I sure wouldn't want him as a driving instructor. That video made me nervous. I couldn't stand watching it.

 

I have mixed emotions for this video.

Pros
Props for know additional tricks for getting astonishing mileage. You cannot argue that he is able to squeeze amazing amounts of mileage out of the car. I will try a couple of them that are feasible in daily driving.

Cons
However, some of that stuff he is doing simply is not practical on a day-to-day basis. And the fact that someone yelled at him as they went by is simply the essence of why people hate the Pri. I would not have published that or at least would have edited it out. I think they got passed by a couple dozen cars during that video. Lastly...doing some of these things require so much input...it takes some fun out of driving for me. I do enough to be aware of my driving technique...but not so much that it is like work.

I hyper mile quite a bit to offset my big shoes. But at the same time, I do it when feasible and within practical limits

In my opinion, he is beyond practical limits. But at the same time great info for what can be done with the car when those opportunities present themselves...even if not often.

 

I can see how she got 86 MPG for this short trip with all the EV-only acceleration, but would it really be possible to get a 86 MPG full tank?

 

Why not...just drive at that speed using his technique for 1k miles.

 

Some Japanese commuters, over multiple months, have achieved 100+ mpg for a full tank. With larger tanks than US-market models. The highest I remember is 118 mpg.

 

First, I should show my wife the video, because she thought I was annoying when trying to show her how to drive our Prius. But, she has gone from 46 MPGs to 53.5 MPGs on the same trip and I'm sure she will improve some more.

I know that Wayne was trying to show the capabilities of the car, but let's face it, it's annoying to other drivers on the road, especially if it's a one lane (each way) road and there are cars behind you. Like others on this site, I do use some of these techniques to improve my gas mileage, but only use the extreme techniques when there aren't any vehicles behind me. As far as local roads (<41 mph) I will use the ICE to get up to about 30 - 35 mph and then reapply the accelerator to get into the EV range to maintain.

As a matter of fact if I know the traffic isn't going to be that bad, I will not take the HOV lane and take another route. This is because the flow of traffic is a little slower and plays right into the cars wheelhouse as far getting more MPGs. I can get 10 - 15% better MPGs and it only takes about 5 minutes more. Since I tend to listen to podcasts through my iPhone the extra time is filled with entertainment and knowledge. And, yes, I do listen to What Drives Us.

On a side note, I saw my first Prius C in the wild this morning on my way to work. I pulled along side of him and gave him the thumbs up!

 

Yes! here is the website:

What Drives Us | Alternative Fuel Weekly Podcast

Priuschat also has one, but they haven't had a new one since last October:

Podcast | PriusChat

I don't know how many people know about podcasts, but it's a great way to entertain and educate yourself while on the go. BTW - they are FREE!!!

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast]Podcast - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

There are literally thousands of subjects you can download/stream to your computer/mp3 player/phone. iTunes has a whole section just for podcasts. Podcasts can be daily/weekly or whenever they feel like producing a new one. They can be audio or video or both!

I love it because I listen to subjects I want to listen to when I want to listen to them, such as back and forth to work or while mowing the lawn. The nice thing is that you can fast forward or rewind as needed.

Try it you'll like it!

 

I love podcasts, and listen to them all of the time. I did not know about the What drives us podcast, so thanks.

 

How could you not know about it? I only advertise it in every single one of my posts!

In my sig....

It's a great show and a lot of fun to participate in. You can go to the website and join the chat during a live show taping. So you can hear it in real time and ask questions or provide comments which are usually incorporated into the show. It's nice to have the feedback while we are chatting in case we say something that is incorrect. DaveinOlyWA is always good about helping us out like that.

 

LOL, because I use tapatalk and it doesn't show signatures.

 

I always thought tapatalk was something that turned voice into text so I never tried to use it. LOL