Re: Hybrids could join taxi fleets
The thing is, when you accelerate hard it's not 20MPG, it's closer to 5MPG, and worse in cars with bigger engines than the Prius. I've found average fuel consumption drops when I accelerate gently, not rise. I understand what you are saying and I used to think the same thing, but now it's not so clear. The amount of energy a car uses to get up to speed is proportional, but exponential to the rate of acceleration, so the faster you boot it, the more energy you are using for the distance you travelled. You'll get ok FE if you use brisk acceleration, but to maximize FE you'll need to use gentle acceleration. Non eCVT type cars will also pollute a lot more during hard acceleration because they need to burn rich to get the torque at lower RPMs, so from an emissions point of view it's also better to use gentle acceleration.
Drivers in our area seem to believe that it's best to accelerate as fast as their car can go, so it doesn't really matter much if you're keeping up with traffic you'll be accelerating hard anyway, but I'm pretty sure (from my own experience) that gentle acceleration is much better overall than brisk acceleration, at least in our Prius I and my friend's Prius II.
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