I am a newbie and have watched the videos about "gliding" and maximizing economy. People seem to agree that keeping the car out of EV mode is best. With the C, I have noticed that the only way to get good city MPG is to keep the car in EV as much as possible and recharge with good braking technique. Without EV, the est city MPG is in the 40's. In ECO mode, trying to keep the engine from starting, I get better than 60MPG on the street. On the freeway with the cruise set on 65, I average well into the 60's MPG. I have a short commute and what kills my averages is getting on the freeway so the best average I can get so far is 58 MPG for the trip.
In town letting the car use EV is what boosts my mpg. It definitely is a balance though, you have to get up to speed then use the cars momentum to both charge and discharge the HV battery whenever you can.
You should definitely be taking advantage of EV power in the city (as you've noticed), but people always warn about over using it because the ICE will come on to charge the battery, wasting all the gas you just saved. If you're braking well and getting enough regen, you won't have to use gas to charge the battery, and then using EV is great.
when the engine starts up its only and idle charge not a 3000 rpm hard accelerate. it will use very little, but you are right is does waste unneeded fuel
Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said that it uses "all the fuel" you saved, just that it's unnecessary waste, and that that's what people are usually talking about when they mention avoiding EV.
Over 60 mpg at 65 mph sounds off. When people say "don't use EV mode," I think they're referring to the button. Making sure EV mode kicks in by letting off the gas when driving around town once you get up to speed is very important.
In flat areas 60mpg should be easy enough at 65mph. With lots of hills I can get in the mid to high 50's.
Sometimes hills don't hurt as bad as people think. Especially if you know how to navigate them efficiently.
Are you gliding on the downside of the hills? You can actually get slightly increased mpg (as compared to no hill) doing that because you're not wasting fuel maintaining engine speed while gliding. However, the original poster said that he got well over 60 mpg. Those 5, give or take, mpg between mid-to-high 50's and low 60's are a big deal at 65 mph. While 60 mpg seems a stretch in itself at a strict 65 mph, well over sounds very, very difficult unless you have a decent net loss in elevation and/or a strong tailwind.
The display with the blue brake zone, green acceleration zone and red zone is pretty neat. Without it, it's hard to judge exactly how hard I'm pressing the pedal, so if I have a good few hundred metres ahead of me and I need to brake, I'll brake just enough so the blue fills up. And then if I'm closing in on the car in front of me and not close enough to stopping, I brake harder Accelerating in the "green zone" is useful on my commute because usually there's another light ahead of me anyway. 19 times out of 20, if some aggressive driver pulls around to pass me, they just end up stopped in front of me at the light within 30 seconds. I smile and gently ask them, "Well how did that work out for you?" I have to admit though, this vehicle may pollute less, but it certainly has dangerous levels of smug emissions.
My C has now taken two 700 mile highway trips and it has averaged (over the 1400 miles) 53.8 MPG with AC on. This was achieved by setting the cruise on 65-67 with clear weather and outside temps that were in the 70's. I am very pleased with this as the car is only rated by the EPA for 46 MPG on the highway...
Am I correct to assume that as long as you don't peg out the blue braking zone you are regenerating? And when you have pegged it out you are using the friction brakes?
no, you are always using MG2 when you brake. if i can find it from one of my old training classes, it shows a graph based on speed and pressure what ratio of MG2 to brake pad usage is being done almost all the time minus say 10mph you are using 60-90% regen and the rest in brakes.
Coming from a non-hybrid it's taken a bit to figure out what works best (for me at least). 1. In my experience what really really helped was staying out of the red "Power" zone as often as humanly possible. I'm not going to impede traffic for my own selfish gas mileage benefit (my own pet peeve) but if I can avoid it, no red zone for me. 2. Don't use cruise control. I lived by cruise control before, so it was hard to get used to, but it made a big difference to. Use momentum to gain speed without lowering mileage when running downhill and don't be afraid to allow the car to slow while driving up hills. Again, I avoid dropping too low and messing with traffic behind me. Where I live it's all mountains. I literally have never found a flat spot anywhere. Any place that looks flat I found I get totally different mileage when driving in opposing directions... which I was doing to test AC impacts and different gear impacts (in my 6 speed manual). But my tests always failed because even when it looked flat my eyes were just lying
To black, you are right. There is a slight downhill grade, at least, there must be because I don't do quite as well with MPG going home as I do in the way to work. For brakes, I have tried "maxing out the blue" but in my eco-score, I seldom score more than two bars. I can't figure out the trick.
You don't want to "max out" the blue- in fact, what you want is the opposite. Longer, less intensive regenerative braking is what regenerates the most energy. Notice the slant to the blue area? That slant is there because regeneration becomes less efficient the harder you press the brakes.
I think the max eco score for braking is to coast partway and brake very gradually. But if don't have as much stopping distance available to you, brake as gradually as is safe for the best charging efficiency. Galaxy Nexus ? 2
