You will not get 50 MPG if...

When i do it in cruise control on a 7 mile long 6% grade hill the ICE kicks in and acts like a air pump i think you call it and holds back the speed. do not know if this answers your ? or not.

 

Interesting!.... maybe they backed it off a bit for the 2010 to make it a tad more efficient!....
I see no problem with having to lightly touch the brakes..... unless the 2010 is different.... a 50K regen generator kicks in when braking.. when coasting, its a 10K... so no foul to have to lightly apply the brakes.

The car has a few different ways of wasting energy when needed.... sometimes it will maintain movement of the pistons....even while sitting still! without fuel being supplied to the engine..... I'm not the guru on that subject but its never a problem.

The logic obviously changes too to use battery when able.. but if your coasting down a very long hill, the engine will turn over to waste energy if there is no place else for it to go.


What I don't know is... does regen continue to work "thus saving the brake pads" and simply waste that regenerated power, or does the regen drop out and you go to friction braking.... I don't think the latter is true.. at least I've never read about that being so.
In those situations.... the "B" on the shift lever allows the engine to burn up some of the kinetic energy with the compression of the engine if I remember right so the car doesn't have to deal with it some other way....ie:" braking, regen etc.

 

I'm guilty of 1a and 3c . But I'm getting around 47 mpg whereas I only got around 43-44 on my previous prius. Can't tell for sure yet since I'm still on the first tank. I did get something like 57 mpg when I was driving on the highway for a while.

I find the what really eats mileage are lots of stop and go traffic, such as at traffic lights, rain, hills, and short trips.

 

I did drive on teh highway a lot, at pretty high speeds, that might have something to do with it. Still, 50mpg, I think you either have to be super careful or drive so slow that people are probably going to curse at you.

I guess the ones getting 60mpg are the ones running the slow lane at 40mph

 

Longer trips, in slower speed areas (most speed limits are less than 40mph here, for example), makes it easy to get high 50's while keeping up with traffic in a very normal way. Higher speeds, shorter trips, and crappy weather will all lower mileage.

 

Put it on Cruise Control, as LRLingII and I do. That will boost regeneration to create enough drag to maintain constant speed. That is, until ...

That power is used to spin the ICE, in compression braking mode. Because the ICE is small, is spins quite fast, sounding like a giant vacuum cleaner.

In Cruise Control or 'B' mode, the Regeneration bar in the HSI display goes to zero, while the ICE starts whining at high rpm. In manual braking mode, the Regen bar is completely filled, but the car is using purely friction brakes, because it cannot regenerate without some place to dump the power.

In the past three days, I've descended 6 different mountain grades in western and central Washing where regeneration completely filled the battery, forcing high-RPM engine compression (in CC or B modes) or friction brakes (manual control).

Is this the Lewiston grade? I skipped it on the way in on my most recent Idaho trip, taking Alpowa instead, but will descend it on the next trip. I did leave Idaho by climbing up this grade at speed limit, as my first high power Prius test. It had 1200 rpm to spare. A couple drivers did look surprised to see a Prius flying by them uphill.

 

i am getting 59 on my current tank (up from 54, 57, 58) and i drive plenty fast

i drive five miles on hilly country roads to get to the greenway, where i drive 13 miles at 70 mph (limit = 65). then I drive 13 miles on the toll road/66 at 64 mph (limit = 55). Of course there are some slow downs and speed ups, and i am in the HOV lane.

My method is to take off in eco mode, and try to delay the ICE. If somebody is behind me i accelerate much faster as i hate to hold anybody up.

Then when i get off the battery only, i punch it into pwr mode and feather the gas so the hybrid system monitor bar is right at the point of being in the "power" red zone and i accelerate fairly rapidly to the desired speed, wher i punch the button back to eco and try and then manage as best i can.

 

That's a lot of switching back and forth. I'm lazy. I just put it in ECO and when I need more acceleration, I press a bit harder on the right pedal. Even in ECO mode there is more than enough power to keep the drivers in the rear view mirror happy.

And I have accepted that some drivers are never satisfied with your speed. That's because they always want to go faster than you, whether you are doing 60 or 100 or 160 (kph that is).

 

Hmmm, mine does 60 mpg @ 60 mph.

On the highway I always keep my CC locked at ~97-98 kph (=61 mph) and the consumption is then around 3.5 l/100 km. Counting with a 5-10% FCD inaccurracy, that's more than 60 mpg. But we have no mountains where I live... And no 40 C heat. But we do have wind, lots of it.

 

Buy a light one without all the options.

Those of us who can barely afford even the base II are really just mileage purists, LOL.

 

in the case of driver habits that rule does not apply.

there is only one rule as far as do's and that is drive sensibly.

as far as distance. i drove 7 miles one way to work and averaged over 54 mpg in summer. its not the drive, its the driver

 

Sounds interesting Fred.... if that really works, seems they ought to able to process that into the logic somehow so you don't have to play with bottons.

I assume you "punched" it into pwr mode by engaging the button rather than punching the gas?... as the latter will do that too until you let up on the gas, then your back to eco mode.

It sounds like your basically using the "low end" of both eco and power modes.
"Eco" being allowing that mode to prolong battery usage as much as possible until you have to go to the ICE, and then going to power mode but being very gentle about it and feathering the gas.

Are you sure going to pwr mode really makes the difference?.... why not just stay in eco mode?


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Also, I've read about folks who accelerate fairly fast assuming if the ICE has to run, it might as well do some work. I tried that logic and it seems my mileage is worse when I do that.
Easy acceleration seems to help overall gas mileage for me.
The Atkinson engine is indeed efficient at high rpms but it still takes allot of energy to get an object moving in a short amount of time.

That high rpm efficiency is what allows up to get surprising good mileage at high consistent speeds. Using air conditioner and slowing and stopping still kills all that if not minded to.

 

when i say i punch into pwr, i mean i press the pwr button

and i should not have said "feather" because that implies i am gentle and i spend a lot of time in that mode.

on the hybrid display screen, there are four "zones". The first and fourth are the smaller, and the 2nd and 3rd are larger. #1 on the far left is regen under breaking, #2 is battery pushing, #3 the ICE is on too, and #4 is the power band in red.

When i punch PWR i am interested in getting up to speed very quickly. I don't however "floor it." Like people try to "glide" by having the indicator exactly between zone #1 and zone #2 (as described above), which also means to have no bar, I try to have the bar all the way on zone #3, and not quite into zone #4. Sometimes, depending on the SOC and the grade, i get into zone 4. I find that there is a sweet spot right around there where the acceleration kicks in pretty good. I get up to speed and then hit the eco button.

That might sound like a lot of work, but it gives me something to do.

And i don't just stay in eco and press the gas harder, because i do believe in PWR mode the computer combines the ICE and the battery more aggressively, and i also think i am still under 50% of the pedal push, so thay are not the same thing.

 

Well, your on to something if it works.... good job!
Interesting though because once you go into power mode, your doing it on the tail end of depleting the battery as far as you can while in eco mode... and during the acceleration, the battery is getting some charge back.

Regardless, your method seems to be giving significant enough numbers that Toyota should take note to possibly alter their logic algorithms to help mimic what your doing manually.

The 2010 has really upgraded allot of the internals... It was let down to me when I went to Detroit to hear that after all that, they only squeezed out another 5 mpg.
Its encouraging to know you are getting yet much more.

 

Supposedly, when you hit the gas hard in eco mode or normal mode, in both cases the curves converge to the same pwr configuration as if you had the pwr mode button engaged.
I think this only occurs maybe in the last 20% or so of the pedal depression.

But I'm sure its not that simple either and you sound like your on to something good!

 

i live in a pretty crowded area, so the ooportunities i have to ride the battery in stealth up to 41 mphs are few and far between. Normally i can only get to 15 when someone's up my butt and i need to hit pwr and go

the gen 3 is a WAAAAY more willing to let me stay in battery at a depleted soc state than my gen 1

i haven't looked (but will try to remember to) to see if when i am in PWR mode accelerating from 15 to 45 MPH what the ICE is doing. Is it charging the battery? I hope not - unless the SOC is really low.

 

I suspect it may be giving a very small trickle charge that the SOC will not be able to show and once your up to speed then do the serious recharging.

As serious as you are about it,.... a scanguage would be a nice tool!

 

As George Carlin pointed out: “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?â€

 

I concur!

 

I have only had my Prius for 1 week now. I have a 1.8 mile commute to work and have been using the Prius to drive around our small town on errands and such. I have 258 miles on the Odometer (11 from the dealership) and am averaging 53.8 mpg.

Reading all the PriusChat threads have really given me an education as to how to drive to manage mpg. I really do not feel that I am driving slowly even compared to the way I drove my old clunker.

The post http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii-2010-prius-technical-discussion/66411-hsi-details.html really was an epihany for me on understanding how to drive this vehicle and my last few trips the last couple of days have been > 60 mpg.

Driving this car really is fun! My wife and daughter have not said I am driving to slow either. I'm not really sure they even notice my techniques to achieve higher MPG. It's definitely a learning curve. If you read the threads and try to apply the lessons in the real world of your own driving, you get better!

Even if you drive a Prius like a "Maniac," you'll still get way better MPG than the vast majority of vehicles on the road, and you should still be able to feel that Prius smugness as you drive by gas stations!