32 miles from Santa Clarita to work in Century City (via the 5/405) - I can do it all EV with about 25% charge left. But heading back home I run out of battery about 20-22 miles in. Anyone else with a similar commute? Interested if you're experiencing the same results. I assume it's because it's more uphill on the way home. But if there were a way to eek out a bit more EV range, I'd love to hear your tips!
Same range for my commute but from OC to El Segundo through mostly the 405. I used up all my EV each way unless there's a jam with stop and go traffic, then I would have about 1 or 2 miles of EV left.
I've driven up the 405 north onto the 5 interchange and it's a decent uphill grade at some points. There's no real way to conserve energy going uphill, even if you never use your brakes at all (i.e. using B mode in EV to achieve one-pedal driving). Your regen rate is near zero, especially at slow speeds. Physics sucks, unfortunately.
My commute is from Palmdale to Chatsworth which is 55 miles round trip. I usually use EV the first 5 miles then once on the fwy, I switched to HV mode. Then the last 12 miles on street I use EV again. That leaves me around 50% battery. But on my way back home, even if I get to fully charge my battery at the mall I usually ran out of EV miles since its uphill even on streets.
Physics does suck....I've tried a few different things, seems as if I drive in EV Auto on the way home, it uses less gas then if I just drive EV only and let it run out.
Yeah I'm a bit too much of a control freak to use EV-Auto. I end up manually swapping between EV and HV.
That's one of the things I intend to experiment with. Is my judgment in toggling the EV/HV better than the Prime's judgment if I use EV Auto? I occasionally do a drive which tests the limits of the EV mode (round trip) and there are some high speeds and hills. I wonder if it's better if I manually toggle it off in some places (speeds over 50, uphills) and then back, or if EV Auto can handle it better.
Google Earth has the ability to show a plot of elevation changes for a given route. Just CNTL+click on the route trace and you''ll see the elevation change graph. Bob Wilson
It depends on how much you want to "baby" the battery. I don't like to drive above 40-45 mph on EV for extended periods. For a minute or so that's fine but if I know that I will be heading up the 405 at 75 mph at 5:30 AM in the morning, then once I am up to speed its HV all the way until I am slowing down to exit the freeway. EV from that point on while on surface streets or if I hit a traffic jam on the freeway. My commute is about 18 miles one way and I average just about 100 MPG (measured by filling the tank and dividing the total miles I got on that tank by the gallons). The MPG meter on the Prime reads about 5 MPG high on average for me so I use the tank fill method instead. I generally charge once every two days and maybe a semi-charge on the weekends to avoid running the ICE until Monday morning. Of course there are guys on here who are getting 200 MPG or infinity (assuming they never run their ICE, lol).
