Speaking of hill climbing;

I have a very steep 800 ft climb to my home. It's through city streets. If I try to maintain a speed close to 30 miles per hour up the hill the engine revs up to about 4000 RPM and at such RPMs I don't get assist. One day I took it easy, drove uphill about 20 MPH. The engine rev'ed up to only 2500, and I got plenty of assist all the way up. Using assist up the hill is good because I can recover the battery charge coming back down. I haven't measured the actual MPG difference but it seems that going easy can make an extraordinary difference in FE.

2006 HCH Alabaster Silver w/Navi
2003 Honda Accord LX