I haven't figured this one out yet, either- haven't watched the mpg gage closely enough to make a determination.

My gut and spotty observations of the gage (non-navi, so I need to reset it often) tell me that the "minimize rpm and get on 3cylinders ASAP" is the way to go. 3 beats 6 every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Our animal is not like the HCH, in that the HCH leans on IMA a lot more than ours does to augment the small engine, so I'm not sure the HCH method of 'use IMA to accelerate" is completely valid for us. I think we should look at our setup more like a traditional 6 cylinder- keep the rpms down. But I don't know for sure. I don't know if any of the hypermiler dieties have enough drive time in the HAH to weigh in definitively on this.

With only 3 or 4 bars ('normal' SoC, at least for me), you need to accelerate REALLY hard to get IMA assist in this thing, especially on 6 cylinders, which means the engine is already tapped out, and running inefficiently.

Generally I've been accelerating a little slower than most traffic from stop, up to 30-35mph. Then I let up on the gas quickly to kick it into eco mode, and continue to accelerate on 3 from there, to extent possible.

I do the same on a cold engine, ecxept eco obviously doesn't kick on. I figure its best to ease the engine up when cold, not slam all 240 horses against the wall.

I'll try the jackrabbit vs tortise experiment as best as I can this week and post my observations. I really need to get an instantaneous gage...maybe Santa will get me one.

Anyone here looked at this and seen results one way or the other?