I wonder if anyone else has this experience. If I maintain any given speed manually, I get about 3-5MPG less than if I set that speed on the cruise control. I know I am not pumping the torque pedal, but there is a definite difference.

Does the cruise control program have some hook into the power management program that makes this happen?

Many of us experience the opposite of what you posted--we get less MPG with the cruise control while driving on the interstate.

2005 AWD Escape Hybrid
Best tank trip MPG 39.02 (scangauge II) for 402 miles on I-70, 10.3 gallons used over mostly flat terrain.

Best tank trip MPG 34.6 for E30 for 271 miles along I-80 in Indiana and Ohio.

I am with Mr Crank on this one...

I get the best mpg reading when USING cruise control..

I always use the minus (-) when setting... which costs me 1 miles per hour...

08

I believe you are all correct, depending on the circumstances. In relatively flat highway driving, I vote for cruise control to win the MPG contest. Conversly, in all other driving situations, especially in hilly country, cruise control usage will lose the battle to a good hypermiler driver, practicing Driving With Load (DWL) and more coasting time. Cruise control will attempt to maintain speed going up the hill(s), at a tremendous MPG penalty. Also, the cruise control must be disengaged to coast. DWL techinique entail loosing a little speed going up hills while maintaining a relatively constant RPM. Doing this will beat the pants off Cruise control. Your instataneous MPG reading tells the story here.

Use of cruise control in Florida with a lot of flat land, probably makes cruise control quite effective most of the time. So IMHO, cruise can win at times, and lose at others. And if the driver is not concentrating on FE while driving, cruise is probably a better option.

Great hypermilers probably don't remember where the cruise control is located

LOL, nice.

Personally, I use Cruise Control at times, and manually control it other times. As pointed out, it's entirely dependant on the terrain, the speed, and the situation. I don't use it on hills, or coming down from hills, at lower speeds or in any kind of congestion, but I do use it on 50 miles per hour roads that are flat and where actually going that speed means I make all the lights in a 10 mile stretch green.

At the FEH Experience, Ford stated in their testing that on level ground, they could only match CC in their testing, but on hilly terrain, they always won.

First 4WD Hypermiler

Have you read the FEH FAQ?

Live in Michigan? Let it be known in Michigan Roll Call

Read My Automotive Blog at Rich Rambles

Our FEH's have cruise control???

It's on the opposite side of the steering wheel from where the audio controls should be

I was heading into 15mph headwind in the Missouri River flood plane today (very flat) and decided to cruise at 50-55 and couldn't find the darn thing. Looked on both levers on the side of the steering wheel before I remembered the buttons on the steering wheel!

-- Rick

I was just trying to walk uphill on a less than 10% slope into a 30 miles per hour headwind, and I could barely move. I don't know how our cars do as well as they do at 75 MPH.
The wind resistance is impressive.

Ford commented on this at the "experience" event in Dearborn. Basically the cruise control is probably better than most drivers at milking the best fuel economy on flat land.

However... the cruise control can't "anticipate" what's ahead and driver's can. On hilly terrain, drivers can take advantage of gravity on the downhill slopes to accelerate (so it doesn't really take much fuel to accelerate), then ease off the pedal on the upslope and let the momentum carry you back up the next hill. Cruise control wont do that. On hilly terrain a driver who knows how to milk it can do much better than cruise control. On flat terrain the cruise control will beat most drivers for milking fuel economy.