I don't understand the SCORE

The score is not based on fuel consumption, but based on how you do 3 things - accelerate, "glide" and brake. And nothing else from what I could see. It is updated each time you start moving and each "rating cycle" is closed each time you move to a stop. When you turn off the car, it gives you the summary for that drive (I don't think it is related to the Trip you have selected).

I don't look at it much, except for the braking - it is teaching me slowly to improve my braking which I know tends to be too aggressive. I get 5 dots already for accelerating and gliding.

In the end, what counts is fuel consumption. Score it is a nice playful way to teach drivers to be more smooth in driving, and hence achieve better mileage (that would be valid for all cars in any case...; it's called physics ).

I find the acceleration indication bar in the HSI (the light blue bar that changes length as you drive around showing you how much you can accelerate "ecologically") more helpful to understand how much I can actually accelerate without affecting MPGs too much.

All the above fuel consumptions at which temps? and how do you drive? do you pulse & glide? do you have traffic lights? what average speeds?

As for the fuel consumption, it is higher at the beginning because the warm up sequence uses "a lot of fuel" to warm up quickly and with low pollution levels at low engine temps. A cold engine is also the most inefficient. And also because you have driven not much to average it out.
Moreover, since the L/100km is not a linear scale (km/L is), it takes a lot more "effort" to push it down 0.1L/100km at 3L/100km than when you are at 6L/100km...see table below:


As you see the change in L/100km looks the same, but in fact at lower numbers, you are driving a lot more to achieve the same 0.1L/100km delta. %-wise it is practically the same because the variations are proportionally bigger as the km/L numbers are getting bigger.

 

Yes, amazingly CC does not a good job at reducing fuel consumption - amazing as it may sound, as it has no way to know if a hill or a descent is coming up and adjusting accordingly speed and acceleration. Typically downhill I let the car roll and never brake, especially on a highway and not being an issue considering traffic, etc. The CC would brake to keep speed constant, or even accelerate in case it is not steep enough, and what would be beneficial would be to either glide or simply let the speed go a bit down, while charging the battery.
Similar considerations when going uphill.

 

Gulp, now I am doubting if it does it or not... I have to check again... I remember some (minor) braking though on Gen3...
ACC is in any case quite smooth. And maybe a tad too slow in catching up speed. I don't know if the modes do have an effect also on ACC behaviour.

 

3rd gen with cruise on (just regular cruise) will definitely use regen braking on downhills where there car's prone to accelerate above the set speed, just due to inertia. My one concern: does it light the brake lights? Otherwise it would be a hazard if someone was following close.

 

The score was a short-term novelty to me. I appreciated seeing it at first and payed attention to it for a week or two. It seemed at times to be counter-intuitive. Better scores for lousier MPGs and such.
Now I completely disregard it and use the MPGs alone to determine how I am doing. Maybe it trained me? Maybe not.

 

I think you explained this to me before, lol.

 

Mine gave me hell for poor A/C control. I do this a lot, climate on Auto with the air conditioning off. Cools the car with outside air. It makes no sense, Toyota needs look what they think is a bad non green thing.

 

I quit using CC when I discovered that the car does not go into EV when the load drops below 50%, unless the load drops on down to less than 25%. In CC, the car "hangs" in engine-on mode when the load is between 25 and 50%, which is a lot of the time. On the highway, running in EV as much as possible, cycling the battery up and down, seems to give me the best fuel economy, and CC doesn't seem to maximize EV.

When CC is off, the load is between 25% and 50%, and the gas engine is on, assuming the battery has charge you can "nudge" the car into EV by letting up on the accelerator for a split second. Of course you can't press down too hard on the accelerator afterwards or the load will climb to >50% (there is a tiny momentary bit of slop allowed) and the gas engine will kick in again.

Once the battery discharges to a bit below 2 bars, the gas engine kicks in to charge it. Ideally this will happen while you are on an uphill steep enough to push the load above 50% so the gas engine will fire up anyway. You can play games with this: (1) using the battery a bit harder approaching the base of a hill to pick up speed and also empty it to "make room" for more charge on the way up the hill, or (2) even if the charge is not at 2 bars as you are going up a gentler hill, consider increasing the load to induce charging that you can use later.

I also like to nudge the car into EV just before reaching the top of a hill, letting the speed ease off just over the top and build back up on the descent, which should be in EV (you can adjust the load to 0 with your foot if you want to coast, or let up on the accelerator if regen would be useful).

On steeper downhills I'll do regen braking rather than get going too fast, which just wastes useful energy to air drag (and money to any cops in the area).

Today I got this, which I found amusing. On the one hand, I'm wondering what I have to do to score 100??? On the other hand, I suspect it remembers the segment where I was going (gulp!) 70mph because I was late for a Dr's appointment. I just happened to see the score, normally I ignore the score and go by mpg, which suffered due to that section. Most of this was without AC if that matters.

 

Interesting comments.
It all depends on average speed. If I go on the highway here, I (have to) drive at the very least more than 120km/h (GPS real) - 75mph. At those speeds it doesn't matter anymore what the CC does. Last weekend I drove to Stuttgart and I set the ACC to 140km/h // 87mph...which about 135km/h real, which is totally normal for most EU highways.

At what average speed did you get the reported fuel consumption in the pic?

I got 100 too. I have instead a really hard time to understand how to get a high score on the braking. No matter what I do, I hardly get more than 3 dots...

 

One fun thing with the score is how it counts the cruising score.

Accelerate at the rate that eco accelerator guidance says to, cruise at a smooth speed, lift off, brake gently, come to a complete stop, then turn, you'll get an excellent score.

Accelerate at the rate that eco accelerator guidance says to, cruise at a smooth speed, lift off, brake gently, continue rolling, and turn, and your cruising score will take a huge hit... but you'll use less energy, because you didn't have to accelerate again. Therefore, you can avoid starting the ICE, reduce ICE load if it had to start, stay in EV longer, etc., etc.

5 dots on the braking, from what I've seen, usually requires not maxing out the HSI's braking portion, and smooth braking with consistent HSI level (tricky, with how the brakes are mapped in the Gen 4). Your braking distances will be long when trying to get 5 dots.

 

Honestly, sooner or later I will not look at the score anymore and I hope there is a way to turn off the feature completely. Because in the end the real score is the MPG. The lower the better