I was in Saturday's 11:30 event also.

Some other interesting notes:

- typical cars have a peak fuel-efficiency somewhere around 45mph, but this is based on the assumption that cars averaging slower speeds are probably in city stop & go traffic. All the "gains" from driving slow are surrendered to the energy wasted and not reclaimed from braking and sitting at traffic lights. Since the Hybrid DOES reclaim energy in slow traffic it actually has a nearly linear fuel economy curve. The FEH engine cuts on at around 30 which is where their curve started. I think the plot showed a fuel economy of about 60mpg and dropped almost linearly to where their plot ended at 70mpg with an average fuel economy of maybe 28mpg.

- lots of questions about the battery array and safety. The battery will disengage in an accident. The battery's cover is pretty strong... I think they said they dropped bowling balls on it to verify that it wont break under loads that are probably more than any of us are likely to put on it. It's also water-tight. If you spill something in the back, you don't have to worry about the liquid going into the battery tray and shorting things out.

- there were lots of specific stats on economy and what hurts it in the presentation. I was hoping they'd let us get copies and they told me they'd see if they can. Maybe they'll give us a copy and permission to post it (e.g. the fuel-economy curves, the data on all the various things that will hurt economy, etc.). There was mention of a decline in fuel economy for each 300lbs of weight you put in the car but I don't recall how much it was. Their point was to not leave heavy stuff in the car that you aren't actually using or needing to take on a trip.

- the aircondition vs. window point was interesting. In a typical car the AC would be more fuel efficient than windows, but not so for the FEH. The windows-down drag is also better than the AC at every speed (they don't bother to test for speeds in excess of the max speed limits -- yes there would be a point where it cross over, but it's much higher than 70mph).

- after a cold start, the engine has to run to heat the catalyst -- this is to meet gov't emission standards. It's not really to warm the engine. BUT... they car does much better when warmed (we all knew that) and takes 2-4 hours to cool down again (depending on outdoor temps). So... they suggest you combine errands rather than doing lots of short errands on a cold engine. They also suggest you drive to the FARTHEST destination first to really heat things up. Going in for a n hour-long lunch wont really give the car enough time to cool down.

- brakes and the "grabbing" problem. They know about this and it's not a safety concern. They explain that when you brake a "light" amount of brake pressure will be 100% handled by the regenerative system. As you use more and more pressure *or* when the car slows down, the computer will transfer braking from regenerative system to disk/friction brakes. This is WHY they tell you that very long braking distances as you approach a stop is MUCH better than waiting until you are closer to the stop and then using more brake (because disk/friction is just energy converted to heat and thus wasted). The computer knows how to adjust from regenerative brake to friction so that the amount you slow down is smooth. It makes the transition for you and you normally never notice. HOWEVER, the computer does not know when the brakes are wet. Moist brakes actually have a higher coefficient of friction than dry brakes. So when the brakes clamp they stop you faster than the computer expected. There are several solutions.
1) Adjust your braking in wet weather to anticipate it
2) Dry your brakes by doing a very hard stop to ensure disk/friction brakes are used.
3) Switch transmission to Neutral as you stop. This will _force_ the computer to stop you using 100% friction and dry the brakes.
You dont *need* to do any of these things... you can safely ignore the brake grabbing if you want. But they point out that if you bring your car to a gradual stop (which is what they want you to do), you'll be on 100% regenerative until just before the car stops (which is when the grab occurs). The final 1 second of friction braking probably wont really be enough to dry the brakes -- so you'll get the grab at a number of stops.

- there is NO linkage from the trans selector to the transmission. It's all electronic. Changing the position of the shifter simply tells the computer what you'd like to do and the rest is handled in software.

- Their best engineers were able to "equal" fuel economy performance of the cruise-control but they were not able to "beat" it when on flat road. On flat road, use cruise for best mpg. HOWEVER... on "hilly" road they were regularly able to beat it by anticipating. They suggest that if you learn to optimize fuel economy then you should not use cruise on hilly roads because the computer can't anticpate things like cresting the top of the hill like you can.