I had not heard that it was necessary for the eco mode to be engaged to get regenerative breaking (letting off on the gas). I have been running with eco mode off for a while to see the mileage difference. If I let up on the gas for whatever reason I see the car moving to the regenerative mode (charging the battery). I say it's charging the battery because the green display on the left (battery charging indicator) shows charging and the power flow meter display shows charging.

As far as my cars behavior I noticed one other item. Because it's rather dangerous to look at the display rather than the road I did not notice that the car was jumping to ev mode for a second (literally a second or less) before moving back to gas only. So at 70mph, cruise control on, and a flat road the car is in gas engine only, then jumps for a second to ev, then to gas and electric motor for a second or two, then back to gas engine.

 

Sorry for the delay in responding everyone:

Current status update: Had the car in the shop at a little of 2k miles. Turns out one of the control arms was messed up and needed to be replaced which was making a popping noise. Since then 400 miles later I haven't heard the issue again.

Mileage Update:
If I am far more lenient on the gas and really worked more on coasting to stops than anything else my gas mileage has increased to between 48-60mpg. If I go on a short drive (less than a 1 mile) the display shows 10 mpg-15 mpg but around 2 miles the battery really kicks in and ups my mpg. I tried to be really lenient on 3 drives and I had 56, 59 and 63 mpg on those 3 trips without any fast accelerating and coasting to every stop.

Currently with making this change my MPG for this tanks is 46mpg and up from 41 since the past 200 miles. I still have another 180 miles left so I will update as the final MPG on this tank with improved driving pattern.

Still use my AC with the numbers above. I would rather get bad MPG and at least not be sitting in 95 degrees weather.

Thanks for the help everyone.
Brandon

 

Brandon, good to hear you have had the problem solved with your car. I continue to have good mileage also, with my last three tanks of gas showing 50mpg average. I drive normally, though usually not more than 5mph greater than the posted limits. I also use the "eco-mode" all the time, which certainly does help. The local terrain often finds me on hilly, twisting roads (Pennsylvania) where I put the shift selector into "B" mode which allows for more aggressive charging when you let off the gas. It really does work quite well, and is giving me impressive results all the time.