GipperDon,

Your plan surely looks feasible but I do not know how much you can
gain by that. A full battery charge gets you about 1 mile of gas free range
under 40 miles per hour. If daily driving is about 25 miles like me, that will be a max
of 5% improvement.

However, as we discussed earlier, in the morning the gas engine has
to come on irrespective of the battery charge state to heat the catalytic
converter to 750 C. In the bay area this takes about 5 mins of driving
for me at about 20-40 miles per hour. In this time if you stop and go the
regenerative braking power will be wasted as the battery is already
topped off. Thus the gain can be become lower than 5%.

If you can drive straight out of your home in the morning and go for
5 mins at around 30-40 miles per hour without stopping, then you can achieve the
full 5% gain. To do better, we need bigger batteries, atleast 9-10 KWHr
worth and need to mostly drive under 40 miles per hour in EV mode. Then we can
get spectacular mpg numbers.

By the way I am currently at 38.2 mpg for last tank in about 80% city
driving. I cannot seem to get over 40 mpg on the freeway. EPA says
36 highway so I guess, I may be expecting too much.

I modified my 9 mile homeward commute to take city streets instead
of a 4 mile freeway stretch. This increased my commute time by 4 mins.
I think I can live with that.