Getting Better Mileage

Glad you are happy and you would make everybody else happier too if you posted this in the Fuel Economy Forum... just a suggestion...

 

I have 19,500 miles on my 2009, the mileage still keeps going up. Either the car is still breaking in, or I am still unlearning bad habits and learning new ones.

 

How on earth. I much as I try to baby and stay in the hybrid eco or hybrid zones I can only achieve 52 mpg.

 

It takes practice. Cold temps, hills, and start and stop driving can hinder achieving the higher mileage ranges. Personally I find traffic to be the toughest obstacle to getting sustained 55+ mpg ranges. I don't want to be unsafe by being in the way or irritating other drivers and that means I can't drive as I would need to in order to get the really high mpg's. Safety comes first in my book. If I'm dead, good mpg's don't mean much.

Pushing the power button to surprise the occasional smug BMW or coffee can exhaust Honda can also be fun but it doesn't help the mpg's either.

 

If I didn't have anybody behind me to worry about, and I could take my time accelerating up to the speed limit, I can, and have routinely gotten greater than 60 MPG. As strange as this may sound - when the traffic becomes congested, and speed limits drop, is when I have the easist time getting over 55MPG, ie, slowly accelerating and coasting. The key to getting good MPG's is to think conservation of momentum, ie, no rapid stops/starts.

 

It takes some break in miles to get better mpg. Even the tires need to have some miles on them before the mileage improves. I don't expect to be in the upper 50's or low 60's mpg until I have a good 8,000 miles on our new 2010. Now I'm only in the mid 50's.

 

I am able to get 63 mpg in my area going 25 to 40 mph, as long as I don't have traffic behind me. If the road ahead of me clears up and I go 50 or so, the MPG goes down. If traffic builds up behind me, down it goes. These are the two biggest factors for me,...and I suspect everybody else.

 

Well, that might be the problem ! The ICE is actually most efficient when working under some meaningful load. Don't floor it, but don't baby the car too much under the acceleration either. Accelerate just "normally", as you would in any other car. The key is to glide whenever possible and to maintain momentum. Think ahead, plan ahead, try to anticipate how the traffic situation will evolve in the next ten or fifteen of seconds. Don't brake, and if you have to, brake gently to maximize regeneration if possible.

I test drove the gen III a couple of weeks ago and although the temperature was around freezing, it was dark, the tires were dealer-inflated (and they were snow tires actually), the car was dead cold because it sat out in the lot the whole day and I went only some 10 or 11 miles in a really heavy city traffic, I actually managed to get 52MPG (indicated, of course) - even under such adverse conditions. I found it much better to hypermile compared to my gen II - the "economy meter" was very helpful, I wish I could have that in my car! BTW, in my opinion, the car actually felt better in the pwr mode even for the hypermilig - it is hard to specify, but the accelerator was more responsible, which I liked better.

The ability of the gen III to glide was remarkable - I could P&G better than in my gen II. Overall, I think that one can get comparable mileage in both the gen II and gen III, but it is a lot simpler to hypermile in the gen III.

 

I have a new 2010 with about 2000 miles on it. We are on Kauai and apparently we have near ideal conditions. Always in the 70's and 80's; Max speed limit anywhere on the island is 50; Some ups and downs in the highway giving ample chances to glide; moderate slow and go conditions in some town areas for a drive from here on the north shore into town.

My wife pays no attention to it at all and usually gets 55 to 58. I pay attention to the Hybrid System Indicator display and work at keeping it in the no-fuel mode when possible. I can usually get 65 on a trip to town and back. It depends some on traffic. If there is none, then it's usually worse because there is less speeding up and slowing down. A little traffic is always better.

Any idea where I can suggest a couple of ideas to Toyota for improvements? I'd suggest:

1) A steering wheel button easily accessed by a thumb which will cause it to apply enough pressure on the gas pedal to give max push without starting the gas engine.

2) A second steering wheel button easily accessed by a thumb which will cause it to apply enough pressure on the gas pedal to start the engine and take it just up to the place where the ECO light goes off and before the little red power indicator starts to fill up.

3) A third steering wheel button which will cause cruise control to "go soft". Cruise control is quite stiff in that it will apply as much gas as it has to in order to maintain set speed. I'd rather it allowed the car to slow down gradually up to, say, 10%. My preferred way to go up a hill is to fall back from traffic a little on approach, build up speed as I approach the bottom of the hill and then minimize the use of fuel on the hill by allowing it to lose speed at the rate of maybe 1 mph every 2 seconds. So for a 50 mph hill, I'd try to have it go from, say 53 down to 48 during the ascent. What I see my wife do in these cases is to hit the bottom of the hill at 50; it starts to slow down a little, so at 48 mph, she punches it and accelerates up the hill and then by the time she hits the top, she finds that she has overspeeded and is doing 53 and then backs off to come back down to 50.... I guess opposites really do attract.

I think these improvements would:

1) cause more people to try to become high mileage drivers by providing easy means of doing some of the right things

2) cause increased safety so that people trying to be high mileage drivers spend less time watching the displays

3) cause cruise control to be a better contributor to high mileage driving

Bob_HI

 

Exactly what I find. If it weren't for traffic behnd me I think I could easily get 55.

 

Just got mine less than 2 weeks ago, and have been picking up tips here which seem to match what I have seen from limited experimentation over the first 800 miles (I'm writing this down at least partly for my own benefit):

1) surprisingly (for me at least), the "middle" of the HSI display seems to be the least efficient. Either stay on the bottom quarter ("glide") or the top quarter ("pulse"). In-between (especially around the center line), the system seems to constantly switch between various modes and also be outside the "sweet spot" for the gas engine - maybe it's fine on perfectly flat terrain with zero traffic, but in the real world it seems to be less than ideal.
2) when needed for stop lights or hills, push all the way into the PWR section, but don't go beyond the tip - apparently this is still within the sweet spot, but pushing harder will cross the line into gluttony. Whether or not to do this depends on the speed you will be accellerating to, or the length of the hill (long hill in low power may spend too much time messing with the battery and be less efficient than using the gas engine to get up to speed sooner).
3) slow accelleration actually may be bad under certain circumstances - not sure why, maybe there's too much battery drain that has to be made up later, or maybe the gas engine is below the sweet spot. But IMO, if you're going to be accellerating beyond 35mph, you'll probably do just as well if not better by putting your foot down.
4) in cold temps keep your coat on, and turn the auto climate off until after you've gone 8-10 miles. Even on a long highway trip you're probably going to do better with a coat on.
5) overthinking seems less efficient on the Gen3 than the Gen2.

There's a page on here with more than a dozen things that will degrade your mileage, many have to do with cold weather so this time of year is not going to be high-mileage.

I think the dotted-line is right around 35mph - if you're staying under that, babying the throttle seems to be more efficient (might want to hit ECO mode). If you're going above that (especially if you're doing stoplights in a 35+ zone), stronger accelleration seems better (Power mode may help). This might also explain why some hypermilers are saying the absolute best mileage is from "pulsing" up to 40mph then "gliding" down to 30.

Anyone else have a "rule of thumb" like the above (or an improvement on this one) that works well for them?

 

Seems like your assessments are right on (pretty good for just 800 miles on) as least from my experience... which needs to be taken into account. Everybody's drive is going to be different and will likely take a different approach to obtain the higher FE.

 

Absolutely - seeing posts from Australia, Europe (and even Alaska) drove that point home

My "city" driving is largely 35-45mph zones (meaning I'm driving 45-55), with a fair amount of hilly-ness and some stop lights, so I wasn't seeing exceptional mileage there unless the weather was so bad everyone drove slowly (under 35mph), or when I was playing with power mode. I think I'll be going back to power mode and simply be gentle (or switch to Eco) when I'm under 35mph.

The temps will go below 0F tonight so I'm digging through the cold-weather tips now to see if I can get better there (although 45mpg is not bad at all). Any tips for snow?

 

Like rain/water on the road, soft snow seems to severely affect the FE. One thing I did do was pump up the tires much higher than I have ever (38 psi) on the studded snowtires. In my other vehicles I have keep them at or below 32psi for traction. The higher pressure on the tires now don't seem to decrease traction at all.

Are you grill blocking at all? For me that seemed to help a lot.

 

Haven't grill blocked yet, but with 9F temps yesterday and losing a couple more mpg (at least), I'm thinking full bottom block for the rest of the winter (especially since many of my trips are under 10miles) - wasn't sure how much impact people were getting from blocking on the Gen III's, but I already know running the heater is a major loss.

After filling up a cold car yesterday and resetting the trip meter, I got stuck at a long light and forgot the heater was still in auto - took a loooooong time to get the avg mpg back into the 40's...

Regarding driving, I think I'm going to start ignoring the HSI and just watch the iMPG - get up to speed, back off enough to get iMPG to shoot up and then press down gently without causing the iMPG to drop below 50. Then when speed drops too much or going up a hill and the engine kicks in again, press harder to get back up to speed. Seems to be helping so far but hard to know for sure without more miles at it.

 

I'm glad all of you are so happy with your gas mileage. I have about 4500 miles on my Prius III so far. The best MPG I got was briefly getting to 50. Since then it's been downhill every tank. Also, I found that the computer aways tells me I'm getting 3 MPG better than I really am. I don't know if it's possible to adjust that. Now that it's cold in Wisconsin my last tank only got me 36 MPG! I got almost that much with my Camry! I'll be getting my 1st oil change soon and intend to pursue that issue with my dealer!
p.s. Yes, I've been doing all the eco things recommended.

 

I wouldn't say terribly happy as I am down from my 56.4 best tank this summer to around 46 now. I have a 30 mile commute that is pretty flat. I do garage at night. Going in the average has been about the mid 50s and going out (sitting outside 8 hrs) as been in the mid to lower 40s. Temp range 7 to 36F.
You can't go wrong with grill blocking the lower grill, it helped me this fall boost about 2 mpg (temps in the mid 40s). I would pull the blocking now to confirm but don't want the hassle.
I am running a ScanGauge and there is no problem with coolant temp (max 193 degrees in 10-20 degree temps). When I am gliding I loose a degree from the coolant temp every 10 secs or so... pretty darn fast. I will probably block my upper grill as well.
As other post noted, all you need is some 1/2" or 3/4" pipe insulation and fit it in between the grill slats.
Please keep good records if you do this.

 

I've got just over 7k on mine and am getting between 54 and 56 mpg.