Jonny - I will let you "borrow" my first photo of the 5-bar assist (I emailed it to you). This one is a little blurry but why would I be proud of a blurry photo of 4 bars, right? You can see that the segment for that day was at 57.4 miles and was 55.0 mpg at the time. This was probably half or a third of the total miles I drove that day. In my job I almost never take the same route so I never have it happen at the same place/time when it does. I do notice that, as you notice, it isn't me doing it but it is the car. I will maintain the same throttle position but the ground will slowly fall away and because the earth is dropping this creates a natural slow-and-gently increase in the EV assist and if the hill gets just a few feet more of elevation drop then the car automatically moves itself into 4 bars and then 5 bars. I find that if I "try" and coax it from 4 to 5 that I can not do it but if I hold at 4 and let the road do this for me then it will bump up to 5 bars for half a second (usually it is just a bump and then instantly thereafter the ICE kicks in and I lose all assist).

Also, after reviewing this photo I realized that you couldn't tell that I was in EV mode since the Instant MPG gauge is not shown so the photos I uploaded to this site has the EV bar showing 100 mpg.

--> Averaged 685 miles/week and 49.0 mpg in first year (35.7k miles from Aug 7, 2006 to Aug 7, 2007)