Trip A is of the last 45 miles and I have got 41-42 mpg -- mostly highway.

Trip B is the total distance of the car ~270 and it's mpg is just over 35. This includes the 10 miles that were on the car at delivery.

The first couple days, I was just driving. I have read some articles here on hypermiling.

What I have been doing is "feathering" the gas pedal.

I have not raised the tire pressure for safety and comfort reasons.

I have experimented with cruise control, but when it brought me up to 3.5k rpms, I stopped. I normally try to not go over 2.5k rpms.

I haven't hung out behind trucks.

My commute consists of long grades up and down, so it's hard to ramp up for them. Going up them puts the mpg meter in the ~30 range, going down them puts it into the ~70 range.

I have expeirmented with the AC on or off. I will take your advice to keep the ClimCntrl set at 86-80.

Any tips?

Thanks, noflash.

P.S. Hopefully after a few thousand miles I will be able to average in the mid-to-high forties. That's my goal anyway.

 

Again noflash, read some of my recent posts by searching my name. My wife had the same sort of abysimal gas mileage and the problem was feathering the gas TOO LIGHTLY and keeping the rpm's below 2500!!! She would get 50 on the way to work very early with no traffic and 28 on the way back. We found out that time in the low mpg situation is much more important than the number of bars of regen or rpm. In other words, do what you have to do to get out of the low mpg situation as fast as possible. My wife no gets 52 mpg average both ways through 26 lights on a 22 mile trip. Here is what I do to handle stop and go lights. Roll gently from the light without using much assist at low rpm until you hit about 10 mph. The only reason for this is to not kill your SOC by drawing very high amperage from the battery at a dead stop. Then lay into the gas pedal to about 3500 rpm-4000 range. No need to punch it all the way, but get up to 30-40 mph as soon as possible. Now let off entirely off the gas to go to regen and reapply pressure to drop rpm's all the way down to 1500 or below (overdrive on the CVT), and ride the car in the 60+ mpg range for as long as possible. When it becomes absolutely positive that you will have to stop. Go into regen mode as soon as possible to capture every last bit of energy available before the stop. Using this method, we now get better mileage on backroads and traffic than I get on the highway. The key is to make sure you are neutral or positive in your battery SOC management. If you go negative and slowly lose SOC, the computer will hit you with a big forced regen penalty and make your mileage drop bigtime. What I have found is do not hesitate to use the assist as much as you need it, but watch how long you use it and how often more than what level. I typically peg the assist meter when I am trying to get quickly up into the powerband, so I can get back into an overdrive situation. Just make sure you capture regen as much as possible, including partial regen when you are slowing down to a light, but not sure if you will make it or not. Hope this helps.

 

Dave.

I had suspected that using the assist in this way made more sense than slowly creeping up to speed.

It really does make more sense to use what free power the vehicle provides in assisting you getting up to speed, rather than S-L-O-W-L-Y using the ICE only.

Lets face it, to get 'X' mass up to 'Y' speed, whether it's slowly over a long distance, or quicker over a shorter dsitance, you will essentially use the same amount of power 'gas' 'fuel'. By using the electric assist as much as possible you are in fact reducing the gas consumed over the same distance. That's what regen is there for after all.

I will definately be trying this on the next tank! Thanks.

 

Great explanation (though it could use a carriage return or two for readability! ).

I was definately having a hard time understanding the best way to use IMA (as per my light foot at odds with IMA thread). Your method makes much more sense.

I've got it now:
easy up to 10mph;
"normal" accelleration up to cruising speed;
back of to coast in ~60mpg mode;
regen when you can.

Thanks a ton, Dave. I will start using this method pronto. You just saved some oil and emissions by spreading the word!

PS I get what "SOC" means, but what exactly is the accronym? State Of Charge?

 

I'm sorry but I have to chuckle when I read how hard you people make it.

I don't hassle with any of that stuff you write about and look at my MPG.

I just go 53 MPH with cruise control on the freeway, and always leave a ton of room in front of me.

I accelerate at slowly as I can stand, and look ahead and plan to conserve momentum.

I almost never use my brakes
I never look at my dash.

That's it really.

 

But your SMUG emissions are off the chart!

 

Good luck noflash on obtaining your goal for FE. I agree with cherokee180c’s methods, they seem similar to the type of roads you travel on. My method is similar…



I have been steadily getting better and better FE since purchasing the HCH II. On my last tank of gas I averaged 52.8mpg over 513.1 miles. Oh what a feeling! Oops it’s a Honda not a Toyota, but it’s still a hybrid… Anyway – I like the look of the new Camry good luck to all you TCH owners.

I obtained this by accelerating up to speed fairly quickly and then trying to use a Pulse and Glide method to keep my instantaneous MPG high. I then drive the speed limit or a little less in the 45mph zones. A/C (auto control) is on most of the time, although I don’t like to freeze. This also included loading the car down with a family of 4 during a 120 mile trip during this period of high FE.


My description of a Pulse and Glide method is as follows:


1. Pulse (accelerating up to speed fairly quick) to 2 to 5mph over speed limit, glide back to speed limit while monitoring the Instantaneous Fuel Economy gauge. It will spike at 100mpg and stay that way for a while.


2. Use a feather touch on the gas peddle to maintain speed while monitoring the road pitch; sloping up or down and adjust acceleration/coasting accordingly.


3. Usually I pulse up a slope (usually short period of using more fuel) and then glide for longer periods while maintaining speed, again peaking the gauge at 100mpg.

 

Wrong and perception. An under-inflated tire is FAR more likely to suffer catastrophic failure than one at mfg or sidewall spec. Not only that, but properly (or "highly") inflated tires wear more evenly and provide better handling, especially in rain and snow. You'll find that many of us run at sidewall (which itself can have as much as a 3x safety fudge factor built in), and some even higher. As for comfort, I took delivery in March at 35/32. Went to 40/40 in mid-May, and 46/46 in late July. I've noticed zero change in how smooth the ride is, a definite improvement on a couple of tight turns, and a barely perceptible increase in road noise.

 

I have seen this a few other places on this site and I really think this (the part about better handling) is untrue. While you (and others) are correct in saying that under-inflated tires are a hazard, over-inflating tires over mfg specs does not improve handling and can be a safety hazard if done to extreme. My reasoning..... As you increase pressure, the tires become firmer, thereby compressing less. Less compression causes less "flattening" on the bottom of the tire, which decreases the contact area with the road. Less tire in contact with the road will decrease the ability of the car to stick to the road in turns. (That is why sports cars like to have fat tires...increased contact area to get better handling.)

Now obviously, there is a happy medium and we should increase the tires as high as we feel comfortable from a safety perspective while still increasing the mpg as much as possible. I am not sure how high the pressure needs to be before handling characteristics significantly decrease, so I won't even try to guess.

 

Noflash, sorry about the lack of carriage returns but I slammed that post out in about 4 minutes this morning before leaving for work.

Kenny, The explanation might have been a bit more complicated than it needed to be, but the method is very simple to execute without even looking at the dash. Once you get use to getting up to speed with a reasonable acceleration rate and then letting off the gas pedal fully to let the CVT transmission move to an overdrive gear ratio with the engine below 1500rpms, you will get 60+ mpg as long as you are not in a high load situation. The mpg meter is really an output and not an input. You can do all of that simply by feeling the car without any need to look at the dash. I only verify the rpms are all the way down, as initially I would re-apply pressure too early and not get fully down below 1500. I you like to run your car in cruise control then more power to you, but you are leaving a bunch of gas mileage on the table. I consistently get 5-8 mpg better than the computer can.