Fusion EPA ratings are quite a bit higher. 2010 Fusion is 41/36 = 39 combined, while the TCH is 33/34 = 34 combined. Now, one may argue as to which is 'closer to reality' - but the EPA results are reproducible for the driving cycles.

FWIW, my average over 22K miles for my '08 TCH is a shade under 40. This summer has been tough - I've dropped to 38 over the last couple of tanks due to heavy A/C use. Average commuting speed is 30 for trips of 12 or so miles. Mornings, with less or no A/C are well over the 42, while afternoons are 38 or less with A/C pumping hard to get rid of heat and humidity. The in-car display is consistently 2 MPG 'optimistic'.

 

Your right the AC will sure pull down the mph. I drove to town today which a 33 mile round trip there and back. This includes some city driving. It rained the day before and was some humid when I was driving with the AC on today in 95 degree heat. I drove easy and only dropped one mpg from my tank reading when we left the house.

 

For those of you mentioning A/C pulling down your mileage; are you using the A/C in the regular mode, or in the ECON mode?
Joe

 

For quite some time, I have always kept the A/C in ECO mode, and kept the thermostat as high and the fan as slow as I can tolerate.

Without these measures, the impact is much worse.

Yesterday afternoon the car read 104 F, so I needed to turn the temp down and let the fan blow on AUTO.

And to repeat myself, from an earlier post, the A/C in this car is entirely electric-driven, so it's energy consumption is more a function of elapsed time than miles or mpg. As a result, the A/C impact is much, much, worse in slow stop and go than it is at highway speed. Roughly speaking, all other things being equal, the A/C would have five times the mpg impact at an average speed of 10 mph that it would at 50 mph.

............for the stock TCH, that is.

Or bringing this discussion back to the topic of the plug-in, with the aux batteries in use, the main effect of the use of A/C is to reduce the effective range of miles over which the aux battery charge will last. The range reduction at highway speeds is little, but at under 10 mph, the range seems to be cut from over 30 miles without A/C to under 10 with.

But the payoff is that as long as the aux charge lasts, there seems to be no A/C impact on mpg at all !

 

I've tried both - in the HOT weather, ECON just doesn't get it done. There is a bit of a difference - 1 or so MPG. But it's not worth doing a 'deodorant stress test'.

 

Last winter Tom in Denver experimented with the ECO feature. He found with it, the ice would shut off at the red lights. When the ECO was off, the ice would continue to run or took longer to shut off.

I then started using the ECO and found my engine would shut down at the red light. I find the same thing when the AC/ on during the summer. It may auto adjust to a more economical temperature. In my case it don't matter, summer I run 80 and winter around 75/76 degrees. I'm like jack and run the fan usually on the lower notches. I prefer the 2nd graph but today at 104 deg I ran it on the 3rd for more air one the cabin had cooled down.

I did find if you move the temp to full Hi or Low, it will turn off the ECO mode. Today I pressed Auto even though the AC was running. I noticed it turned on the outside air vent. Still on Auto (ECO still on) I quickly pressed it off and could feel it cooling lots better. I may get that Vent option set next time I drop by the toyota dealer. That is if there is a option for the vent.

 

Has anyone gotten a clear, definative answer from Toyota as to whether the Enginer or Hymotion systems affect any of the warranties on these cars?

 

Any updates?

 

Now that this post is back. I bet Jack is on his second month of driving with the same tank of gas.

October 2009 I got 5 weeks driving on one tank of gas from installing a new set of michelin saver tires on my TCH. My MFD read 63.6 mpg. I did it by using a top tier brand of gas, tires to 40 psi cold. I drove 40 on EV when I could. Any slight uphill I would drive 45. I use the cruise all the time. I'm hoping I can do better this October when the weather cools to around 80 and the winds calm down. My driving was from 8 miles south of town which included some miles in town. The population here is only about 38,000.

 

Well,.............. yes and no.

I have not used any where near a full tank of gas yet, but my endeavor to log 30 days of strictly plug-in experience have hit several snags, each of which caused me to restart my 30-day record attempt:

1. (Possibly from a welding machine load, not the plug-in unit) I had a serious electrical failure in my garage. Source of the problem was aluminum wiring, previously not known to me. I decided to re-wire the affected parts of the garage electrical. (Fortunately, it appears that I have all copper in the house; the house way pre-dates aluminum wire, but there apparently had been a garage modification during the aluminum wire era.) A week or so passed until I got this done - no plug-in in the mean time.

2. I experienced failure of a dash-mounted switch, and lost another week or so until I received the replacement and had the time to install.

3. After one of these incidents, I attempted to re-start my 30 day log, but could not get the tank mpg to reset with a small fill-up until I had driven for a week or so to burn off some gas.

4. Once the temperatures reached the high 90's, I began experiencing some difficulties with the unit shutting off apparently on a thermal switch, possibly indicating more ventilation needed. The unit exhausts heat via fans and comes supplied with a hose to enable venting the hot air to the outside, but I had not yet done that, and had been OK until lately.

On this last point, recall that this is the first Camry installation; so the proper routing for that vent hose has not been worked out.

Anyone out there have any ideas on that ?

The good news is that the interruptions have caused me to document, over periods of a week or two, just how bad my baseline (i.e., without the plug-in unit) mpg is with temperatures in the high 90's and heavy use of the A/C. It's worse than I realized - 20 to 25 mpg by the week and even worse on bad days.

You may ask: "Why is this "good news" ?"

Answer: Since my baseline is worse than I thought, I'm getting more benefit from the plug-in unit than I had realized.

Even though I'm only averaging in the 40's, I may still be cutting my gas consumption nearly in half !

Day-to-day experience still has it's highs and lows.

Some highs:

Some of my Sunday trips to church have gone over 60 mpg now that the traffic is lighter.

Last Saturday I ran my usual trips to the cleaners and the bank virtually completely on battery power and indicated 99.9 mpg for the trip - including the initial unavoidable ICE start-up effect.

On a recent 12-mi highway trip to the nearby airport I clocked 62 mpg.

And all of these are WITH A/C !