2018 HyCam amateur review and ongoing blog

This is a serious enough issue I need to do something. I was thinking either a strip of dark window tint on the bottom of the windshield or the vinyl on the hood. Do you think a carbon fiber look for the hood would be cool or out of place? Or maybe a Dragon...

 

From the owner's manual:



As we already know the button is on the right closer to the hand than the arrow.

 

Yeah I was thinking a strip of vinyl on the hood or a strip of tint on the lower part of the windshield. When I called a buddy about it he thought I intended to wrap the whole hood so I got to looking at options for the whole hood. Black carbon fiber should cut down on the glare but there are so many other cool designs. I don't know if any of them are for me. I mean spider-man is cool but I don't know if I want him on my hood...

 

Excitement! The first calculated tank:

48.1 Lifetime MPG displayed
1347 Miles OD displayed
477.3 Miles for the tank displayed
55 MPG for the tank displayed
170 Miles of range left for the tank displayed, evidently this is more accurate than the fuel gauge which was just below half
$21.81
9.053 gallons to fill up

and the calculator says: 52.7 MPG at the pump vs 55 MPG displayed

This is a decent result, however I expect much higher as the weather warms up. On really cold days I was only getting in the high thirties or low forties driving normally or mid forties doing every thing I could to save gas. On warmer days numbers in the fifties or higher were easy to achieve.

A word about my commute and driving style.

My commute is 16 miles (one way, total) of roughly one third 55 MPH highway, one third 45 MPH back roads, and a third city driving.

Going to work is done in some traffic at or a shade above the posted limit. I drive normally or sometimes even a bit aggressively (if running late to work). Going to work tends to be uphill and into the wind as well. On the plus side it warmer on the trip going to work

Coming home there is almost zero traffic so I drive the limit or less. I've been doing my best to save gas on the way home. Coming home is also somewhat down hill. The wind tends to have died down so I don't usually get much of boost from the wind on my return home. Also it is colder at night so mileage suffers as a result (in Winter anyhow).

All and all I'd rate my commute as better to much better than average for getting good mileage.

 

How fast were you going and how warm was it?

 

The 2018 THC has Auto Glide Control (AGC) which is evidently just lighter regen for longer coasting. AGC is available in ECO mode only, Normal mode has higher regen drag. Some hyper-milers seem to really like the feature, I'm on the fence on the subject.

Any regen level the car picked would only be appropriate for a limited number of situations. Even with AGC I'm often using the accelerator pedal to get less regen or hitting the brake to get more regen (or driving the car in Normal which lacks AGC). AGC works as advertised but I only rarely let the car coast in AGC without needing to adjust one way or another.

 

I'm guesstimating that the 2018 LE hybrid would have got 44 MPG during the cold part of your trip. Maybe climbing up to into the low fifties as the temp warmed up to the point of needing AC. I have no experience with temps warm enough to need AC yet so couldn't guess what would happen on the warmest part of the trip.

 

I think that there is not much room to hypermile on the highway so what you get on the highway is going to be fairly consistent. In town there is a lot more room for special techniques like feathering, driving without brakes, light timing, chasing the rabbit, etc.

The EPA shows slightly better MPGs on the highway but I get my best mileage at slower speeds so for my situation the highway will not be the best, YMMV.

Sorry I know I didn't really answer the question. I think it is highly traffic and driver dependent.

 

After "Photoshopping" a matte black hood on a white Camry I've decided not to wrap the hood. Black hoods look cool on some cars but not the 2018 Camry. Instead I've got plans to put a stealth strip of dark window tint on the bottom of the windshield. This should change the look of the car very little and should last longer than a hood wrap would. The fact that it will be inside out of the weather should have it lasting indefinitely. Also the strip should cost something like $25 installed.