To Dan, Wayne, Rick, Dave, and Bob,

Your Prius Marathon last August inspired me to improve my driving technique in my 2004 Prius. I just got my first tank over 70 MPG (a 664 mile tank) and before trying to master the pulse and glide my best had been 57 MPG. My lifetime avg is 50 MPG (winters here in Maine are pretty hard on FE).
I read through the thread covering the marathon to try to learn a little more about refining my P&G and a few terms such as DWL and MIMA were mentioned as differing techniques used by Dan and Rick. What are these? Also did anyone attempt to create a synopsis of what was learned over the course of the marathon as far as refinements in technique? For example I imagine there was some discussion amongst the team about how to get even better mileage and it seemed that there was improvement over the course of 48 hours of driving. One difference between Rick and Dan's technique is that Rick seemed to accelerate more aggressively so that he could spend more time with ICE off. Was there any consensus reached about what worked best? Did you attempt to time your pulse to end at the top of hills and then take the glide down to 33 and then pulse again to the top of the next hill or did you just try to pulse quickly to 40 and then glide without worrying if you were going up or downhill. It just seems unbelievable that you were able to maintain those numbers, I can occasionally manage a few 5 min segments at around 99.9 but certainly not for hours on end.

Anyway great work publicizing hybrids and high FE driving techniques.

Dennis

I don't want to answer for the fantastic four, or five; but here's a little help with the acronyms.

DWL is listed in the glossary here at GH as "Driving With Load - keeping a constant pedal pressure/fuel consumption up and down a hill, resulting in reduced speed going up the hill, and restored speed on the opposite (descending) side."

MIMA is associated with Honda's IMA system, not Toyota's HSD. MIMA is the work ofMike Dabrowski. Lots of info about his gizmo can be found at InsightCentral.net.

Regards,

Thanks Don,

I am clear now on DWL, maybe the MIMA comment was just a joke I didn't get.

Dennis