PiP/Volt January 7-11 Switcheroo

You are getting a hang of it. I bet you can squeeze out more efficiency, especially with warmer temp.

 

Be careful, efficiency has to be broken down into both electricity and gasoline depending on the miles driven on each.

I know you are expressing the overall gasoline consumption with MPG and ignoring the electricity consumption.

 

Ok, wouldn't it make more sense to just state the electricity efficiency and ignore the gas?

 

Thanks for the report.. Just a comment about the volt range estimation. Its a highly filtered value with multiple time constants. While the new 2013's show instant kWh, the early ones like Jeff's (and mine) don't You can rarely see the effect of regen unless using a OBDII monitor. So while you may have gained 1-2 miles it might not show them.

Once the car enteres CS mode (ICE) it will not count any miles as EV as they were effectively generated using the gas to generate energy (e.g. by climbing then descending a hill). Within a trip its trying to properly allocate miles to the underlying the source of your energy. The only want to get regen miles after the ICE to show is to literally restart the car. In CS mode, at moderate speeds, so maybe not so likely you'll see this, the ICE will be on for a while (and charge up the battery a bit), then off for a while. But you have to watch powerflow or lisen carefully to hear it as there is no change. All those miles, even when the ICE is off, are counted as CS miles.

 

Where was this?

 

He's getting much better numbers than I do with the same car. But then again, I'm a way less conservative driver.

 

Yeah, Jeff mentioned the same to me. And this morning I paid more attention to the display and the feel of the car and knew when it was blending battery & engine, or just running on engine, or just on battery.

When I started out this morning, It said I had 38 EV miles. When I got to the top of the same hill, it had dropped to about 36. By the time I got to the bottom of the hill, it had gone up to 39 miles. So while in CD mode, the EV miles estimate will go up and down as expected.

 

This mornings update:

I started out with a 38 EV mile estimate, but only got about 35 miles. Damn hills. The last 15 miles of the commute were gas powered. I'll have to go back and look at the specifics for exact miles and amount of gas burned and MPG stats. Or Jeff could just login to Voltstats and get me the info.

This was a longer commute than normal because I had to go to the dentist, which luckily is in the same town as I live. This little detour added about 4 to 5 miles, all EV miles. Had I not gone to the dentist, I probably could have only burned gas for the last 10 miles of the commute.

I did not use the climate control system other than just having the fan on and using the seat heaters.

 

One thing to consider is that if you know you are going to burn gas, you can use Mountain Mode to get ICE-based heat a bit earlier and use the ICE on the highway then turn off mountain mode about 15miles from your final destination. If you will need ICE on the way home, might not even turn off MM until you get off the highway close to work so you use the ICE while its already hot and save more EV for the return trip.

 

We call this hitting the HV/EV button in the PiP.

 

It's a bit different so be cautious with switching in/out of mountain mode. If your below the mountain mode SOC the engine will kick on and force charge to get to the moutain mode SOC, and you will take a large consumption hit in the process. That is quite a bit different than the PiP's HV/EV button.

The MY2013 have a "Hold" mode that is closer to the PiPs HV/EV button, just holding the SOC for city driving.