Does anyone have much experience with Pulse and Glide in the HiHy? My understanding of the technique (from reading Prius forums) is:

To pulse, accelerate slowly from 30 to 40, and try not to use the battery power.

To glide, let your foot off the gas at 40, and try to get the car in a "off" mode where no power is flowing anywhere (to or from the battery, or to and from the ICE (internal combustion engine))

Anyone had any luck with this? I haven't had any luck - although I found an entry on about.com where someone said that using this technique they got 47 mpg out of their HiHy.

Any experiences welcomed!

HiHy '06 Limited, Sonora Gold. http://ianandwendy.com

It's not really accelerating slowly. You want to accelerate as fast as you can using the ICE (i.e. gas engine) only. This can be seen on the display in the prius (and on the limited hihy) with arrows going from 1) the ICE to the wheels, 2) sometime the generator to the wheels but 3) NO arrows from the battery to the generator.

Correct. If you let go of the gas you will see the car start to recharge by taking energy from the wheels into the battery. If you just so gently touch the gas pedal ALL arrows will go away. To do this your engine needs to be warm and your battery in good condition. Otherwise it will still default to the gas engine and if this is the case you are better off accelerating a bit more and then using regen mode (or so I think).

I've seen posts here that indicate it can be done one the HiHy quite well. A couple of tricks is to let go completly of the gas pedal for 1 second then just touch it lightly. If any arrows come on (either using battery power or ICE) you need to let go of the gas pedal again to make it go (i.e just letting off the gas is not good enough). Sometimes it can't be done when the engine is cold, battery low etc.

Hope this helps

I find the pulse part relatively easy to accomplish by watching the arrows, but the glide, in my opinion, is much harder to do on the Highlanded than the Prius. The Highlander has a very narrow band of accelerator position that will allow you to glide the way you should. What I find helpful is the KW meter to the left of the speedometer. When it indicates power flow that I would consider regenerative, the arrows may still indicate power being consumed. I've found a needle position that I consider no flow and tend to watch that rather than the arrows. When I drive the wifes Prius I find myself looking for the meter. I've read reviews that consider the meter useless, I would not agree.

I have a limited hihy but no nav. I don't think I ever see arrows from the battery to the ICE. I just see arrows from either the ICE to the wheel, or the Battery to the wheel, or both, or no arrows at all. Am I missing information because I dont have NAV that wouldhelp me P&G?

Thanks

HiHy '06 Limited, Sonora Gold. http://ianandwendy.com

Hmm. no the nav system adds no extra info. If you have the screen then you do have the same info the Prius gives. I know that the basic HiHy doesn't have a screen so it's harder to tell what is going on. It could be that the Prius and HiHy display works differently I don't know.

The goal when accelerating is to use only the ICE as much as possible (i.e no battery) and also to avoid using the ICE to charge the battery as this is inefficient for fuel efficiancy (FE). it is also inefficient to have the ICE charge the generator and have the generator push the wheels (this can at least be done in the prius). When I accelerate I try to find a bad where I use the ICE only and all it's power goes to pushing the wheels forward not to the generator (or the battery). It's not a perfect science (esp. at low speeds) but you can find a pedal position that makes the ICE spin the wheels mostly.

I did find that this improved my FE overall. Hope it helps

This is probably good insights. On the prius it's also not always easy to find the "no arrows" spot. You have to have a gentle foot/ I can imagine this being harder on the HyHi as it's built for power not FE.

If you have Nav on the Highlander it works and looks just like the Prius. If you have 4WD you have the rear motor added along with its power flow. Without Nav, you still have a subset of the Nav graphics under the speedometer. I don't use the speedometer graphic since the Nav screen includes that information. The speedometer graphic includes all the power flow except the ICE charging the battery. If you achieve no power flow between components, you will be able to see that on the speedometer graphic.

You're right, the only time I could imagine that being the case was when the battery was starting the ICE but that really isn't a condition the display would indicate.