Bad things you do to get a higher "score" (MPG or EV%)

I run my traction battery down to purple while I am eeking out the longest glide I can. Stupid, since I know the fuel economy will not be better than more gentle battery use. I'm doing it less these days, but it has taken almost a decade to get over the immediate gratification.

 

Yes, I have done this once or twice with my PIP, but have done it regularly with my previous Prius when a trip around the block would make the overall mileage an even number - often 50, but sometimes 55 or even 60!

 

When I first got the car I did a few excess distance trips, taking the very long way home, passing the first exit and stuff, especially to test how far I could go. Even had one day where I just went out for a drive to test max range on a battery trying to catch the best posted range to date. (I did not, then considered it folly as I spent 2 hours doing it).

Now my follies are things like volunteering to take my wife shopping, and run errands I would not previously have done. And when she takes my car I don't complain about her multi-stop coupon shopping where she visits 3-4 stores to get the best deal.

 

I'm new here. Is there some tactic I can use in the beginning to potentially extend the range of my battery?

 

On our 2011 Prius, in the Winter (Cali winter...) I used to run it in EV mode the last bit of the way home so when i got home the Traction Battery was pretty much dead. I'm a good husband and start/preheat the car in the morning for the wife. My thought process was then at least when the engine was warming up and warming the car up it had a battery to charge.

Fast Forward to the Plug-in... Since I was always in the Habit of doing that I figured best EV/HV ratio would be from forcing the car to drain the traction battery similar to how I used to so I would use more electric the last bit of my trip, then on the charge; charge it all right back up. I haven't been able to do this though. The Plug-in won't let me lock it into electric mode once it's depleted the main chunk of the battery and has switched itself to HV mode. Has anyone found a way to that I'm just not figuring out?

 

I recently was in Berkeley and used a hotel charging station. It was meant for hotel guests only, but one has to do what one has to do, right? I felt obligated to make perfect use of that charge - I was 13.5 miles from home with 11 miles electric range showing.
I knew I could do it all electric with very conservative driving. Super slow acceleration after lights, 50 mph on the highway - this senior citizen, hat on in his Lincoln, caught up with me and didn't know what to think. After a couple minutes he finally decided to pass me.
In the end I had 0.2 miles range left for the remaining 0.4 miles. No problem as long as I didn't go above 10 mph. By that time my entire family was cheering me/us on (the car behind us was probably ready to shoot us) and we did roll into the garage with the gas engine still off. Stupid? Certainly. Sweet victory? Definitely!

 

Oh... this sound ssoooo familiar.

 

Larry,

1) Use up your EV range so it is low or zero at the end of the day.

2) Set the charge timer so that charge completes just before you are ready to use the car.

It is not good to store your battery with a high amount of charge.
It is best to use your battery right after it completes it's charge.

 

Try using EV mode when tooling around town and coast as much as possible. I've read that short burst of accelleration then a nice coast is better than a long steady accelceration while in EV mode. Not sure if it's true but I entend on trying it out

 

this is called pulse and glide but only works in hv, not ev. best thing you can do in ev is accellerate gently and drive as slow as possible.

 

Pulse and Glide works for me in EV mode. When I glide, my distance travelled increases, and EV range does not decrease - it sometimes increases .1 to .3 miles at the end of the glide. I consistently get over 14 miles in EV mode when the the beginning range is 12.9 to 13.3 miles.

 

With the Gen II Prius, mpg was much lower on short trips, and there was a lot of bragging over mpg going on, so some folks would extend their short trips, driving farther than needed, in order to get trip mpg up to a more "acceptable" number.

My solution was to instead brag about how few gallons of gas I used in a month. With my 3-mile, ten-minute commute, in a North Dakota winter, I had the worst mpg, but the lowest total gas consumption, of anyone on Prius Chat.

Now I sometimes take "unnecessary" trips, but it's not with the intent of achieving any particular statistic. It's just because I enjoy driving my electric car. You know how much fun it is to drive when your PiP is going electric, so you can imagine how much more fun it is to be able to drive as far as you like in a high-powered sports car and never burn a drop of gas!