I am not sure if the Asst means the electric motor is active, or if it means current is being drawn from the batteries. My thought has always been that the motor is active when gliding (zero Asst, zero Chrg, zero gallons/mile), but it is only consuming the juice generated by the ICE and not drawing from the battery so it shows no Asst bars.

All things considered, I try to use assist only when accellerating. If I see white bars when cruising, I adjust the gas (usually by backing off) until the bars go away. This is because draining the battery below 4 bars puts you in forced regen mode which is considered (around here) to cost you overall FE.

Regarding the avoiding brakes comments, you aren't really avoiding the brakes so much as maintaining your momentum. The worst thing for your FE is accelleration. If you are able to slow down to 30mph, avoid stopping, and then accellerate back to 45mph, you are better off than accellerating from 0-45mph. This is true in any car--not just hybrids.

In terms of brake regen, you are recovering about 30% of the energy you spent to accellerate. That's much better than the 0% you get in a normal car, but with a 70% loss, you are better maintaining your momentum than stopping and starting.

Commuter car, grocery getter, and summer road tripper--average 10k miles per year.


Winter road trips and ski trips, bad weather commuter and my wife's "daily" driver--expected average 4k miles per year.