I just bought my HCHII last week after much consideration with this vs. the Prius. Must say that I am convinced that I bought the right car!

My daily commute is 25 miles each way in Hawaii, where I start from sea level climb several thousand feet to go through a highway tunnel then back to almost sea level before climbing another hill on a ridge to get to work.

In one week improved my mpg from about 40 to 47 mpg!

I have noticed what I think is forced regen every day when I leave work for about 2 minutes, no matter what my SoC is- usually I am 7 or 8 bars after my morning commute.

My car is outside in the hot Hawaii sun. When I leave after work, I immediately coast down a sharp hill, so I should be pegging out the mpg and having some green bars. But, the first 2-3 minutes I get no green bars when I am coasting downhill and the iFCD reads a max of 50mpg. Then suddenly everything is back to normal.

Why does it do this? Does anyone know? It kills my gas mileage going home, as I seem to be wasting some good mpg numbers on my first downhill going home.

 

I start my commute every day going down a 1 mile long hill and experience the same thing. I believe that it is part of the IMA system warm-up procedure where it is essentially resetting it's parameters. I can coast more that 1/2 mile before it wakes up and starts to regen. The iFCD does climb up to 100 after things get going. I think that this may be one of the reasons that the display mpg is usually lower than what you will calculate at the pump.
As for the forced regen at 7-8 bars, I've found that there are certain conditions where this always happens to me. They usually involve a very long incline where I am trying to use as little pressure as possible and yet maintain speed. If I ease up on the gas: regen. If I use the slightest pressure: lower mpg on the iFCD. This happens when I'm going around 45-50 mph and trying to coast for all it's worth to get to the crest of this incline before a long, steep decline down the side of a plateau. Eventually, you'll become adjusted to how the HCH works and will just accept these things as part of the IMA programming package.
Don't you sometimes just wish you lived out in flatland???

 

I get it very frequently.. as I am still at the learning phrase. The auto-regen doesn't seem to charge it fast enough...

And at times, while crusing at highway, I notice the battery is also changing. (speed constant). Is this auto-regen or forced regen?

 

I've seen a forced regen, something like 4 or 5 times now, and only had the car since the 17th.
I got it the first few times, when I was using more EV/Assist, and I think it's getting better when I try to keep it in the neutral zone (no regen, no EV).

But, I still get it once in awhile, when I have to travel up some of the bigger hills in my area.
This is especially tough on me, when I am driving up the road to my house, as it's a very steep and somewhat long hill, and I always have to stop before making the turn onto it. I just wish that when I leave in the I could take advantage of going downhill again, and get the regen, but unfortunately, my driveway starts in the middle of the hill, and the engine isn't warmed up enough for regen to kick in.

 

Yesterday was the most I had ever seen forced regen going up mountains doing over 75mph with AC and 4 people in the car. Also while parked with AC on while autostopped when it gets to one bar the engine will come on and force regen the battery.

 

It's by design. On a cold start, the car will give you assist immediately, barring extremes in ambient temps, but it won't 'auto-regen' (engine brake regen) immediately. This happens to me as well.

I believe it has something to do with the catalytic converter needing to come up to operating temperature in those first few minutes, because it only happens when the car is cold started. For whatever reason (probably the spark/fuel cut that occurs along with it), using the regen algorithm interferes with the CAT coming up to temp and helping with emissions. So there's a good reason for this, and don't worry too much about it.

Because of this, there's no way you could improve on your home commute at the outset - unless you had just arrived, and for whatever reason, left soon after (within an hour or so) - then you'll see your immediate regen as you start your initial downhill. Correction - there is a way, but it would involve you coasting downhill with the engine off , transmission in 'N', and the key in IG-II / 'run' (dash lamps on). You'd then turn the key to IG-III / 'start' when you reached an appropriate decrease in speed / elevation / need for safe restart of engine. Note that I'm not advising you to do this, just mentioning that it's possible.

Outside of that, just figure you're doing the best you can within design limitations.