I saw that southern state cars get an option for body colored mud guards. I want to put mudguards on my Camry but wanted to find out if anyone has the bodycolor ones and if they could post a picture of them or send me a picture.

I bought my TCH last Sunday and mudguards are important here in Mass.

Also, I am struggling to get good mileage in the city. On the highway I can average over 38mpg, but running around town (and driving really lightly), I've been hard pressed to get over 28mpg. What gives?

I am at 400 miles on the odo.

 

As far as the city mileage goes I have a few suggestions:

1. Try to learn to anticipate lights and coast as much as possible to regenerate the batteries.
2. Accelerate moderately quickly to your city cruising speed (can't be too high in Cambridge) let off the gas pedal to shut down the ICE and then lightly give it enough gas to maintain your speed. This should allow you to maintain your speed without starting up the ICE.
3. I used to try to accelerate slowly from a stop using the electric motors only. However, it's an excruciatingly slow acceleration and wastes a lot of the battery's charge. That's why I suggest using the ICE to accelerate.
4. Combine trips. If you're taking a short trip, shutting the engine and letting it cool down you're not going to make best use of the car. That's because the ICE will stay on when it's not at operating temp to bring it up to normal. So if you're doing a lot of short trips with time between each trip you're going to hurt your mileage.<<
5. Pay attention to the analog mpg gauge. It will often tell you when you're being efficient and when you're not.

Hope this helps. I used to live in Massachusetts but I'm now in southeastern VA. Most of my city driving is on roads that are 35 mph with traffic lights every 1/2 mile. On those conditions with a warm engine I can average close to 40 mpg.

 

OK, I had to look at this thread just to see if someone was claiming a LINK between mud flaps and poor city mileage. Glad to see it's two unrelated items!

FWIW, I tried to improve my city mileage as well, but I think I was accelerating way too briskly and seemed to make things worse. I think I'm doing better now, but only time will tell. I'm posting my mileage to the database here.

 

I have to also add that I achieve my FE without using those mpg sucking mudguards. (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

 

Maintaining a 40mph electric only cruise is the path to enlightenment. When you master this, all past driving sins are forgiven, the radio will play your favorite song, and even the children will stop fighting in the back seat. Its as if space-time has created your own little bubble of reality. When you drop back into normal space-time look down on your ECO-level and you will be rewarded.

 

I have to keep playing with it to increase mileage. I had tried the slow acceleration thing but you will get many curses here doing that. The best mileage I get is when cruising between 30 and 40MPH. Stop and go driving seems to still be the worst condition. Perhaps the Camry is too heavy of a car compared to the Prius, where you can get to 20mph pretty easily on just battery.

 

I will be ordering some of those new-fangled body kolor3d mud guards with the hypermilage chip f3r good mil3age...

 

Riiight! LOL Be sure and install the Tornado Vortex Generator for an 3xtra 20 hp and 24 p3c3nt gas mil3ag3

 

Droid13 has it exactly right. After about 3-5 minutes of warm-up, I'm able to accelerate up to 35 or 40mph (whatever the speed limit is), take my foot off of the accelerator, let the needle drop down to "E Mode," and then ever-so-slightly apply pressure again to maintain my speed. This will bump up your mpg significantly.

 

It IS? Darn, and for a moment I thought that I was ahead of the game since I got the black mudguards and not the body-colored ones, thereby assuring my higher city mileage!!!

D-OH!!!