First off, I want to thank the long term contributors to this site who provide many "good" and hypermiling tips to increase FE. Practicing them certainly seemed to help me average over EPA in my new HCHII over its first 3k miles. If I had known them, I might have kept my 99 Accort MT and not purchased a hybrid...

Some also suggested keeping a log of your daily commute to see what helps/hurts FE along different segments. Well, after a few months of trying to be "good", I tested what "bad" driving did to my FE. I kept a short, two day log to/from work. On the first day, I was "good" - on the second "bad" (high rpms, high speed, lots of braking) basically how I used to drive.

Attached is the log. I drew a few key conclusions - 1) certainly good driving habits alone saves me 5-15mpg, 2) even with bad driving habits, the HCHII gives pretty darn high FE on my commute and 3) driving "bad" did feel more stressfull (and guilt for blowing my tank FE ...). I am sure there are plenty of other factors going on in the data.

OK - on to running the numbers of driving vs flying family to Disney next fall - maybe buy LCD TV with the savings

 

EXCELLENT!!

This is the type of experimental verification and validation we need. There are a lot of things we still don't know about our hybrids and this is how we find out!

GOOD JOB!!

Bob Wilson