"'Hypermiling' for Dummies" Gen 3 Guide?

I like this video the best for getting good Prius MPG:

I have the same tires. I have the pressure set to

44 psi front
42 psi rear

 

There is most definitely a need for somewhat of a toned down description of techniques for hypermiling. Even to the point of not using acronyms the first time the opportunity appears in a post. Maybe putting the acronym along with what it stands for in the first instance in a post. My guess is that at least half of us who visit this site are not direct descendants of Wayne Gerdes, but do admire the heck out of him. I believe Wayne is the inventor of the actual term "hypermiling." Please correct me if I'm wrong. This video is great. Being from Northeastern Minnesota, I'm actually waiting for my second winter to add some of the cold weather ideas (grill blocking, for example) so that I'll have a way of personally analyzing their effectiveness. In the meantime, keep up the good work all you Wayne wannabe's.

 

Well, I know catgic will point to his 10 suggestions, but to be honest, it's a hard read as well.

Best I can do, being a fairly new Prius owner myself is give the basic pointers I have learned so far:

1) Make use of your car's Instant MPG indicator - If you hit 'Disp' a few times, you will find an --.- MPG indicator. That will tell you what your 'instant mpg' is at a given time. The reason to use this, it helps tell you rough idea of how much gas you are burning at a given time. More Power - More gas being burned up. This also helps you know when you are doing the 'efficient' driving at time.

2) Use the Power indicator as a good role model - As the video shows, and a few others, you will find that often times, you will be wanting to drive around the 'half' mark when you can. I have found, for highway, push hard to get around the speed you want, then ease up. Your car should be 'coasting' with you occasionally applying power.

3) Find your sweet spots. In the case of what catgic has sort of calculated, the cars have certain 'sweet spot' speeds. Your initial problem will be getting up to those speeds, sometimes, you may want to gun it, other times you should ease into it. The Instant MPG monitor is generally the best way to gauge it, especially on flat, windless roads. The more times you can maintain the Instant MPG counter to a high number, the better your MPG.

4) Forget high speeds. Try not to go too fast. Trying to maintain higher speeds, even on flat, no hilly terrain, will force the engine to do most of the job instead of both. All the Prius cars have a 4 cylinder engine, it isn't very powerful and highway driving, you are going past the governed electric motor, for older Prius cars, its somewhere around 32 MPH, for Gen 3 (2010- to now) 43 MPH and Prius Plugin at 62 MPH. Once you push your power past the half way mark (gunning the accel) or past these governed speeds, you are making the engine kick in, thus making it do some or most of the work.

5) Be aware of the 'start up period'. All Prius cars will have a 'start up period' where the engine will kick on, regardless. While an engine block heater will help reduce that time, you will see on the Instant MPG your MPG will be low until you start moving a bit. catgic recommends getting your car moving around 15 to 20 mph. You will see your Instant MPG indicator start off with single digit MPG until you get moving, so basically, you are going to be making use of the startup gas burning to get going.

Now note... This is from me who hasn't messed with the default Tire Pressures, since even I asked what would be more ideal. I am slowly picking up the tricks and again, I had a hard time parsing all of the recommendations from catgic's posting, but these are a few things I managed to pull together so far to make it 'simple'.

 

First off don't try so hard!! It's a new car drive it like one for a few months and see what MPG you get!The best advice I can give you is put it in gear put your foot on the gas and drive! it will come to you like magic.

 

The HSI is the best display to use, by far. It will guide you in the highest mileage acceleration and braking to use. Carefully and safely learn how to brake in the CHARGE zone.

 

No problem. As I told catgic, I tried reading his and went... Zzzzz... But skimming, I picked up the initial basics. Since I am in California, with slight up and downs, no flat terrain runs and doing highway, I went from my first tank being 33 mpg to 38 mpg. My more recent car calculated mpg is closer to 42 now.

The biggest hurdle for most people will be breaking the three basic no-no habits:

1) Hurry up and Brake - This is the biggest flaw in a lot of drivers. Speeding up, then slamming the brakes. This happens a lot on highways and city streets. While the Prius is good for burst and coast (Speed up, then glide), most people 'ride' the accelerator, not realizing they can just coast. All cars should be letting off the gas as soon as you see the traffic slowing down, braking only if you aren't slowing down enough, but definitely not riding the gas until you NEED to brake. Most cars can actually decelerate on their own due to drag and just the car's innate means of slowing down. Braking also does one thing, kill momentum that you have to regain by re-accelerating, in some situations, you find cars will 'speed up' again, so you needlessly kill momentum and needing to spend gas to regain what you killed unnecessarily.

2) Speed is not your friend - Again, as mentioned before, there are sweet spot speeds for your car. The Prius actually kicks back a rough idea of how many miles you are getting per gallon, unlike most other cars. You will see that your Instant MPG (iMPG) showing. Ideally, you want to be at 99.9, but on the highway, you aren't going to get that unless you are coasting. Pushing your car to higher speeds, you lower your overall Instant MPG, therefore also lowering your over all MPG in the process. To maintain higher speeds means more gas you need to burn, hence why the Prius Highway is a bit lower than city, as you are having your Gas Engine (ICE - Internal Combustion Engine) do a fair amount of work. More pushing to stay at higher speed, the more fuel you burn.

3) Riding the Accelerator in general - One of the benefits of the Prius is the whole 'gliding' portion. Unlike other cars, you have the "Hybrid Synergy Indicator" (AKA HSI) showing how much power you are pushing into the car. In some cases, you can cut back on the amount of power to keep your car going, but most tend to keep holding the accelerator, then switching to brakes, which again, is a bad habit we all have with the old cars. We never had any feedback information a like we do now with the iMPG and the HSI indicators. The HSI will allow you to judge along with iMPG feedback to not waste fuel needlessly.

 

Pump and Glide is the way to go... Get to the desired speed faster (don't be affraid to step on the gas pedal harder till you get close to the speed you need) and that let it go so you can glide. As soon as you let go, re-press the gas pedal to stay within the first half on your meter. You will see that the MPG meter is still staying at the max - you are using the electric power to help your Prius glide within the desirable speed. Granted, eventually (depending of the terrain) you will start slowing down so you will have to step on gas again... And that's how to save the most... Fairly simple. I'm sure there's a ton of other "tricks" for the "pros" but for us, regular folks this is the way to go.
Also, don't be affraid of the PWR button - it will get you to the desired speed faster and give you some self-confidence in your vehicle without compromising your MPG, as long as you let it go and glide after that (with some electric help)...

Hope that helps... :welcome:

 

Well, technically, it works also on the Highway, however, most people tend to 'push' to keep going. The thing is, it depends on the highway, as in California, I have ups and downs. I can get some higher iMPGs when there are slight grades down, and also drop down to the 30s in iMPG due to slight grades up.

You will find, if you are just slightly above mid-range on the HSI, you get better MPG, and you can dip down to the mid-range or below midrange on slight downhills.

Also just take advantage of following other cars, just not like riding them, but following them at a reasonable pace and distance and you will also see some improvements.

 

All good info and guidelines - as Betrock states - accelerate as normal if you think things are going fast (e.g. getting on the highway, etc.). Then, take your foot off the accelerator as this basically resets the ECU (Electronic/Engine Control Unit) power/voltage/Amperage values.

This is about all you can do with the stock Prius for good MPG with always checking your tire pressure and keeping up with service visits.

If you want to get a bit more aggressive and get your MPG in the high 50’s and see even 60 or 82 mpg (yes I have screen shots to proved those numbers), read on or message me. Here’s some things (I’ll try to keep them semi-technical).

1) Prius was essentially designed by Electrical Engineers is seems as lead engineers on the project. The Battery, Hybrid Drive and ECU are really quite good at optimizing those resources.
2) There is a hard requirement in the ECU for the ICE (internal combustion engine) to be warm and ready to operate in a few seconds. To that end, the ECU demands that the ICE be warmed up EVEN for a 1 mile drive. Thus, if you start you car and drive 1.0 mile , you’ll likely get a complete engine driven drive with about 28 mpg (I’ve done this on many occasions which was the precipitator of my research and attempts). So, if you really want to OPTIMIZE your MPG, you need to get the engine warm fast and keep it warm at all times during your drive. Toyota could have very early on, designed a louver system to close off the front of the car until the ICE was warm or the AC needed cooling - THEY DID NOT!

To that end, you probably have read of some people out there using a radiator air dam to reduce passive air cooling of the engine. This is exactly what I have been experimenting with over the past 18 month in both zero and subzero weather to near 100 F summer temperatures.

At first (with UltraGauge close monitoring of engine temps and characteristics -> ultra-gauge dot com for details), I put the pipe insulation over all the front openings (two rows shown in below photo). This worked well in light driving and very cold weather. However, with all three rows in place, moderate to heavy driving or warm weather (above about 40 F) would easily heat the engine to turn on the electric fans (about 225 F engine temp).

So, what I settled on is shown in the photo, I have pipe insulation blocking the lower radiator vents. I have driven in this configuration on the highway, local roads, with AC running and in temps from subzero to near 100F (with AC running). The ICE quickly heats up to around 180 - 190 F and almost always stays above 140F (which is the magic temp where the ECU will assume the ICE is warm).

Bottom line, now my ICE shuts off all the time. If I take my foot off the accelerator at speed, the ICE shuts off. If I accelerate slowly (keeping it to midway mark on the gauge), the ICE never turns on.

As can be seen prior to this I was getting the 28 - 49 mpg (once in a while 50 mpg slow driving). After, using the two rows of air dam, I now often get high 50’s to even 82 mpg on temperate days in the city.

I’m sure the nay-sayers will warn lots but I have done 18 months of testing and the engine NEVER got over 200 F. In fact, the fans came on only once after driving in the summer with the AC on and I had stopped.



Below are various MPG readings from before and after the air dam testing:




Here’s some shots after the air dam and in various drives and temperatures (notice the overall odometer - 94,000 miles and no spark plug changes or anything except maintenance visits):