Wow thanks for all the replies. I've noticed that hills seem to impact the prius more so than regular cars, and whenever I come to an incline, my deceleration is much more noticable. So when trying to keep up with the flow of traffic, I'd have to press down on the accelerator harder on the climbs. But I'll try to maintain 55mph from now on (when noone's behind me), and see if that makes a diff. Thanks.
Hilly climbs are made more complex by heavy/fast traffic that expect you to follow the same pace. I have steep hills just one day a week, but have an alternate route through residential streets with 25mph posted limits. Egro, by taking the slower speed streets, I don't offend as many that I'm not going 50mph. But even 50mph is horrible for mpg's because now not only are you fighting the hill climb, you're fighting more wind drag. Below 30mph, wind drag is virtually nil.
"B" uses engine compression to slow the car so it is less efficient from a perspective of conservation of energy.
Nope. Using the same example: infinite MPG means *zero* gas was used coming downhill. 60 miles on one gallon is 60 MPG. As others have pointed out this sort of thing is a lot clearer when using gallons per 100 miles instead of MPG. Take a different rate example that might have more intuitive force: if you drove 30 miles at 30 miles per hour, followed by 30 miles at infinite speed, what was your average speed? In other words, "how far did you go" divided by "how long did it take"? Ignore relativity :_> Hint: the correct answer is not (infinity + 30)/2.
yea, bwilson ... didn't you know that? uh, no ... it doesn't use compression. It aint a jake brake. The search tool is your friend. Look it up .
I didn't claim it's a jake brake. Where does the energy go, smart guy? How about this: http://www.techno-fandom.org/%7Ehobbit/cars/b-mode.html What's that? Pump? Heat the air? Sounds like it compresses the air inside the engine! My main point stands regardless - B Mode slows the car by throwing away energy even though it might charge the battery as well.
