The dealer hooked up my truck to the meter the other day.

The meter shows a SOC readout. Apparently the normal SOC is 50% - that's what the meter showed and the tech said that was the right number. I was a little surprised as I thought it would be more like 70% - seems curious that it is that low.

One nice thing is that we now know that the SOC is accessible from the OBD-II interface - now just have to figure out the scangauge code to access it. You can also see the amount of charge going into the battery pack through that interface.

The tech thought that most of the mileage magic with the two-mode hybrids was that the extra torque provided by the electric motors helps to hold the engine in the V4 mode. The extra time in V4 gives it that big mileage boost... Without the hybrid, apparently the engine jumps into V8 quite readily.

I've had to do a lot of downhill driving the past few days, and have used M4/M3 to check the speed. This seems to force charge into the battery pack. It seems that the pack is programmed to dump excess charge as soon as possible, as after a long downhill I see the truck go into auto-stop mode very readily. Anyone else notice this?