I've noticed and been experimenting the past 2 days with something strange, at least strange to me. Leaving work each day, I have about 4.5-5 miles of minor down hill grade. It always aggravates me that I can't truly glide on most of this slope because the ICE motor is warming up. Yesterday I was watching the Eco meter/bar as I was coasting to the first of 2 sharp (15MPH) 90 degree turns, and noticed that as I applied the brakes, the ICE must have turned off because the MPG meter shot up to the top of the scale. Normally, I'll accelerate to 35-40 MPH, release the throttle and watch the ECO bar go into the charge section of the gage as the MPG meter goes into the 90-100 range. I slowly depress the accelerator, to move the bar back toward the neutral/glide position and as I do, the MPG meter slowly drops to around 40-50 and continues to drop as the speed slowly bleeds off. But as I said, yesterday as I applied the brakes, I noticed the meter went shooting to 100. So today I played with it and not only was I able to get the ICE to turn off at each of the sharp turns, but after accelerating, as I was going straight after the second turn, I was able to get the ICE to turn off by braking while still keeping the throttle depressed to maintain 35 MPH. Now I don't have any extra meters to tell me what the engine temp was, so I don't know what stage of warm up the motor was in, but I can tell you that outside temp was about 65, the first turn is about 90 seconds (1/2 mile plus parking lot congestion leaving the school) into my journey and the second turn exactly 1/2 mile on down the road (35 speed limit). Without using the braking trick, my motor will not shut off for gliding until about 6-8 minutes or 2.5-3.5 miles into my drive. Anyone else tried or know of this 'trick' to turn off the ICE? I was able to raise my overall MPG for the 23 mile round trip from 63+ to 64+ MPG today by being able to actually do serious gliding in those first 3 miles. Tom
Hey Tom, What is your AC temp set to? If you want your engine to turn off sooner, press the Fan (for AC) button off. Once your are through the turns, turn the fan on again. This assumes the cab is cooler than outside temps.
I thought our cars have brake over ride on them? Your saying you can hold down the brake and still gain speed using the gas pedal? or is this the reason the ICE was shutting off for you? In my car i tried taking off fast and then with my other foot press down on the brake while still pushing down on the gas, and the brake pedal over road the gas pedal and the car slowed down.
You've done a great job of describing what I see as my car warms up in the morning. I haven't seen the mileage shoot up while braking (although, my first guess would be that you were using some regen to charge the battery, thus the engine didn't have to do it). But to keep it up......I'll leave that to Ken to explain (because I don't know the answer).
Some clarifications. Spidy, No AC or heat on (windows cracked at 68 degrees). Adamace1. I was NOT saying I could gain speed while depressing the brake. I said ... or as close to 35 as I could. The braking, while moderate, was only long enough to watch the MPG gage climb rapidly to the 100 mark. I'll be experimenting with it more on the way home today. Brake over ride may well be what's kicking off the motor, but I would have never suspected the over ride system would turn off the ICE when just normally braking, as what initially caught my attention, slowing for a 15MPH sharp turn without any throttle. Thanks for the input, guys. Tom
Actually, once the cat warmup cycle is complete the engine can shut off as long as the car isn't calling for heat (e.g. A/C auto on). Pressing the brake pedal seems to signal to the HSD that you will be stopping and it will shut off the ICE faster or sooner. -I- wouldn't press the brake while using the throttle, but if you're going downhill you probably don't have much throttle -request- applied, so it may ignore the input and assume you're coming to a stop, and therefore shut off the ICE.
