Long Distance Creeping (now with pictures)

I have sympathy for you.

I'm assuming you've considered the possibility of a different route, and I don't think it would be legal to install pneumatic grapplers on your car to latch onto the car in front of you.

Maybe turn off as much of the electronics as possible, including MFD... and for the short pulses, actually try to make sure the ICE comes on instead of stealthing.

OR... petition your local government to change the traffic sign at that intersection to something that makes more sense for the road's use. You could probably walk down the line of cars collecting signatures some morning to back you up. It might actually work.

 

Lean on your selectmen to get a proper roundabout installed
at that intersection. The backup will vanish.
.
_H*

 

Maybe you can get a blind guy to hang around the intersection. They seem to want to get things done when nothing's happening.

 

Is it level or uphill?

I'd try leaving a bigger gap and start timing the stop n go traffic so you don't have to brake. If possible, get an ev button so you can kick that ICE idling into off.

 

This is where the solar panel becomes useful. It can avoid your mpg killer situation. I am talking about next gen.

For this gen Prius, creep in D and glide in N is the best I came up too.

You can leave home 15-30 mins earlier and that should improve the situation. You can control the time and traffic varies with time.

How far is this 4-way jam from you home? If it is close by, I would start up and let it warm up until the ICE shuts down. This way, the battery can be as full as it can. It is better to idle during the warm-up than during stop-n-go.

If the trafic gets gradually worse as you close in, to this 4 way jam, don't let the car go into S4 stage. S4 drains the battery pack quickly by raising amp draw before the ICE starts. Stay in S3 and use EV button to shutdown the ICE. Accelerate in S3. This will preserve battery juice for your a mile creep.

 

Can you expound on this?

Tim

 

Since you're referring to a stop sign where there probably aren't many 18-wheelers, creep distances are a car length or more, and creep speeds may need to be a bit faster to avoid upsetting other drivers, I can't help much with advice with your particular stop and creep situation.

However, I have a daily 40+ mile each way expressway commute, and with the expressway construction throughout the Chicagoland area over the past couple of years combined with the occasional nasty accident, I've occasionally encountered multi-mile stop and creep situations on the expressway.

In these situations, I try to position myself in front of an 18-wheeler. Many of them seem to prefer a large following distance wich allows me to creep a bit slower without seeming to annoy them. Then I can creep slowly (sometimes just dropping it from neutral to drive without touching the accelerator pedal), allowing the space in front of me grow, and drop into neutral when I see brake lights 3 or 4 cars in front of me. As I'm neutral coasting and the 2 or 3 cars in front of me accelerate into their hard braking, the buffer temporarily grows a bit faster and then with them stopped I coast into that space. It is especially great when the next creep begins before I've completely covered the buffer. I get to just keep on neutral coasting as they begin to accelerate away again. I've noticed that the 18-wheeler behind me is frequently behaving similarly. Letting a bit of a buffer grow between min and me before he even begins to accelerate, and then slowly coasting into this space as traffic up fron hits their brakes.

I suppose leaving a 2+ car-length gap in front of you before creeping and then trying to time a slow enough neutral coast into this space such that as you close the gap to a yard or two the vehicle in front of you is moving away again, allowing you to extend your neutral glide, isn't a realistic plan?

If not your options are rather limited by physics. You need to use some form of energy for the sum total of the accelerations between when to firt stop until you pass through the stop sign. You've already indicated that an ICE acceleration won't cut it and pushing isn't an option. This only leaves the battery. You've already made it clear that your creeps are required to be too slow to get any regen, and that you are limited in how far you can neutral coast.

Assuming that taking a different route isn't a realistic option, the only variable you seem to have any control over is the sum total of the accelerations. The more distance you can cover in each neutral glide, the less total number of times you'll need to accelerate.

It would be interesting to count the number of times you accelerate. Do this for a few weeks, and you can compute an average number of accelerations from various initial stopping points. Then you can challenge yourself to try and reduce your number of accelerations against those benchmarks. In the same way that small changes slowly add up to higher MPG, you may find that small subtle changes in the way you handle the situation slowly add up to fewer accelerations.

Example, perhaps repeatedly letting the gap in front of you grow too large to avoid needing to accelerate twice will annoy the driver behind you, but you may find that letting that gap grow large just once each trip is acceptable to you. This shaves one acceleration off the benchmark. You might even find that you are comfortable with letting that gap grow once when you first stop and again when you are 2 or 3 cars from the stopsign. Now you've shaved 2 accelerations off the benchmark.

Watch for situations where it seems reasonable to let that gap grow just slightly more than typical (the car behind you is leaving a larger than typical gap, or the car in front of you is accelerating more aggressively than the other vehicles around you). That extra few feet might just make the difference between an extended neutral coast or not once or twice per trip. Combine this with the inital and final extended gap, and you may shave 4 accelerations off the benchmark.

Thats all that comes to mind right now, but you may find that when you are focussed on trying to shave just one more acceleration off the trip on any given day, you discover other reasonable and novel methods.

 

With the current trend of "green" thinking, you might be able to turn some heads by suggesting financial- and carbon-savings by improving traffic flow there.

You may be able to ask your city hall for records of accidents in the area too. My city's paper publishes stats annually of the worst intersections, and that certainly does tend to get some attention. Maybe that intersection isn't as safe as you think... one can hope!

 

This might be your chance to make a sacrifice for the betterment of others.

Tom

 

When Prius starts up cold. It goes through the warm up process (S1) to heat up the catalytic converter. During this stage, ICE only rev around 1,200 RPM with a special ignition timing to generate the most heat. If you drive off as soon as the car get to the Ready light, Prius would use the HV pack juice and hesistent to rev up the ICE further more. You can drain the HV pack easily in S1.

My suggestion was to let the car finish the warm up process and charge the HV pack during this time to reach S2. This takes about 20-40 seconds depending on the starting temp. This way, the HV pack will be more full to start with and can "survive" in the a longggggg jam. When the pack get to two pink bars, Prius starts to drive like a Civic Hybird IMA and it gets pretty annoying and inefficient. The ICE would start as soon as you accelerate and shuts down when you hit the brake.

I hope that clears up a bit.

 

You need a group of like minded people to do a stealth round-a-bout install in one night at that intersection.

Next day send your local representative an election contribution check for $50.00 with a note praising and thanking them for their smart thinking a fast action.

 

With all the stories of bicycling to work becoming the big thing, this sounds like a great ride - there's nothing better than beating cars on a bike!

(This of course is probably not an option for most commuters for a number of reasons.)

Seriously though - if your commute is, say ~10 miles, you're physically fit, and you can find a safe route into work (and you can dress casually), a ride to work is actually quite feasible without much/any sweating. (That's a lot of "ifs").

 

I don't see any pictures.

 

I don't see a picture on post 15 either...

 

I see a picture. This is Tony's pic in post #15: