Driving with cruise control

I live in Southern California and my commute is not flat. I wish the cruise control had more 'brains' and didn't go full throttle on a slight incline. If going 72mph I'd be fine dropping to 70mph on the incline with steady throttle pressure but instead the car just floors it.

 

I always have eco mode on.

 

I'm not sure if this is a plug-in specific question. Anyway: I drive in normal mode (neither ECO or Power), and use cruise quite a bit. Watching the instant mpg on a ScanGauge I've found it does pretty good at driving efficiently. The only thing: at low speeds around town it'll stay in stealth mode as long as possible, maybe too long for my taste, eating up the (meager, non-plug in) charge happily.

 

For me, CC saves on fuel and speeding tickets.

 

if you work at it, you can do much better than cc. if you don't, throw it in cc.

 

Ya, you can do better than the Gen3 cc. This is one thing I hope they'll address in the next gen.

Side note...dynamic radar cc following (drafting) a truck that slows down up hills and speeds up going down is ideal. Wish I had it! Haven't done the math, but I guesstimate it could save you a couple hundred bucks over the life of the car if you drove hilly interstates a lot.

 

I prefer cruise control on the interstate.

 

Totally agree. I use it, too. But from a pure numbers standpoint...you can do better.

Also, if it interests anyone. I've used a modified DWL technique that takes much less work and still uses CC.

 

My limited observations suggest that ECO mode allows a bit more variation in speeds, or stated another way the "throttle" response is 'softer'. I now use ECO almost always. I often drive on rather hilly roads with 55 mph speed limits (rural Kentucky). While I use cruise I don't set it and forget it, instead I use tap up and tap down to modulate my speed, based on the instant MPG display. I aim for a peak speed (at the bottom of a large hill) of 60 and a minimum speed (at the crest of a big hill) of 50.

 

We also have a 2012 Honda Civic (non-Hybrid) and with the ECON button on it will allow the car to bleed off almost 5mph before accelerating. We live in Florida and this is great for bridges. It will bleed off 4-5mph and pick it up on the decline. Picked up a 2013 Prius tonight. The trip was from the east coast of Florida to the west coast of Florida and back via highways. Both the Civic and Prius got 45mpg on this route. I feel the Honda cruise control is a little more intelligent/green.

 

Hey, with two speeding tickets last year?
I'm using a carefully set cruise control a LOT more now.

Just saves me from potentially momentarily zoning out and accidentally getting a devastating 3rd ticket.

Not scientific, but before this, I always felt that usually if I was paying attention, I could do better than the cruise control as far as fuel economy. Just because if I'm controlling the throttle, I can let the speed drop given momentum and conditions and what I see ahead on the road, to try to maintain good fuel economy. While if the cruise control is engaged, it's primary operation is simply going to be to maintain exact set speed.

 

I would imagine with the CC on, the system overrides the feel of the pedal, so Eco would only affect the HVAC system.

 

Well I think the simple answer would be YES the computer is faster than us in terms of modulating the gas and electric drives optimally.

But, dynamic radar cruise control aside, cruise control cannot and will not know what is coming up ahead and will not make the possible human decision to cut speed to maintain fuel efficiency.

I will admit my "opinion" is totally unscientific. I just always felt on long highway drives, I could do marginally better myself compared to having the cruise control engaged. This would be in the freeway or highway environments that might still be congested enough to see changes in speed. Urban freeway environments.

On miles and miles of totally open freeway? I'll just set the cruise control...to give my foot a break. And I don't think there is much if any difference between the Cruise Control maintaining 55 mph and myself maintaining 55 mph.

 

Freeway and 55 mph you either travel in the right lane or live in the sticks. Going that slow here will get you, run off the road! I use CC all the time and don't worry about if I can get a couple of mpg better manually, I doubt I can!

 

Out here, the freeways are rarely level for more than a few miles. Lots of up and down, and once in awhile a mountain pass. I can get about 10% better mileage not using CC....about 5mpg better.