Unfortunately, we were headed to Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana for a swim meet, and the speed limit on the (infamous) Indiana Toll Road is 70 mph. He averaged 48mpg with cc set on 70. I drove home hoping to increase the MPG, but only got 46.5 on the same 50+ mile run at 70 mgh. No doubt about it, speed has a lot to do with FE. And since my wife was in the car, she did not appreciate my attempts at drafting with some big trucks!

Oh well, I know the car can do much better, if I drive it responsibly.

 

I "officially" (for the database) use my calculated milage (miles driven and gallons of fuel). I am a "2-click" guy....fill the tank until the pump clicks off once, then squeeze the lever once more until the pump clicks off a second time. I feel that way I get a fairly consistant fill, even if the pump clicks off prematurely the first time.

 

Greg,

You are correct in the FE and (Speed) kills it. I own a HCH II and I have gotten some really "Great FE" with CC. But speed up and it (FE) goes to the Dogs.

Greg, Read Post 4-Below:
http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=548

https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...h-ii.8438.html

Regards,

Terry

 

I've had my son out some more driving my baby. Tonight he raised the trip mpg from 50.1 to 51.5. This is for 218 miles. Lifetime so far is 47.8 on 335 miles. I am really encouraged with this car. My son is even getting into it as we are high-fiving at each .1 increase over 51.

Admittedly conditions were favorable. Light traffic, long straight road segments. temps in the 80's, no a/c. But considering I'm still on the 1st tank of gas and am barely breaking in the car so far, I think the results aren't too shabby.

My rental car was a KIA Amanti. Wasn't impressed with it. Got 17+ mpg on 250 miles down in Atlanta. But it did have the extra room I needed when my sister and niece were in the car.

Totally off-topic now. Saw Pirates of the Carribbean : Dead Man's Chest today. Great movie - loads of fun.

After the movie I had a hybrid moment. Saw another MagPearl. We exchanged thumbs up and knowing smiles.

Later.

Mike

 

Speaking of thumbs up and knowing smiles, I used to have a Jeep Wrangler (why I got a Hybrid...) and there was the Jeep wave...

Is thumbs up and knowing smiles like the Jeep wave? Is there a customary HCH greeting when/if (haven't seen one yet in Orlando besides mine) you see another?

And this forced regen stuff - not yet for me, but I'm only on my 3rd tank...

 

Began my third tank today as well.
No forced regen, yet.

I HAVE seen when auto-stop would not kick in like normal. It appears to be "iffy" when you get down to 5 bars and "not gonna happen" at 4 bars or less. It drives me crazy now when the ICE should be OFF - but isn't!

I have seen the SOC (State of Charge) as high as 7 bars, and as low as 2. This forced regen - where is the SOC?

 

The auto-stop works fine for me at 4 or 5 bars as long as the car has warmed up (a few minutes at most during the summer for me). Is there any chance that something else is causing the auto-stop to not work properly? Sometimes, there can be problems if you let off of the brakes a little bit and then brake again. I have experienced this. It does not matter how fast you brake as long as you do not go back and forth in brake pressure when stopping. This is just my experience, but I hope it helps.

I have since changed my driving techniques, but I used to use the EV mode as much as possible. As soon as the SOC would drop to 4 bars, it would drop out of EV mode and I would get 2 green bars of charge.

Starting with my current tank, I now avoid battery use as much as possible. This has resulted in an overall improvement in FE. Today, I had record FEs for my commute. For the morning, slightly uphill, I had 58.5mpg. On the way home I was just over 94 mpg (I think there was a good breeze helping me). Each way includes one stop to pick up my son at daycare. Of course, I also passed the magical 3500 mile mark.

 

gumby, forced regen as I know it will occur at 1 bar SOC.

 

Thanks, I've experienced the uneven braking thing, too. I think this is something different - and the car is warmed up here in Texas in about 2 minutes! So I'm sure that wasn't it.
Only starting the third tank, so I'm still very green at this.

I, too, am trying to minimize using the battery. Not sure how the SOc got down to 2 bars.

 

I've noted 3 types of regen under engine load (or, what we tend to call 'forced regen'):

- After an assist event, where no green 'charge' bars are visible under any kind of load at steady-state cruise (the only way you can tell is via a reduced iFCD display for a few seconds, assuming you're on level ground and not on an incline).

- After a longer assist event, with one green bar visible for up to a minute; it will be visible longer if you're driving with load, as you're not using as much of the engine to maintain speed - thus, the IMA figures that it can use the 'excess' to put a little charge into the battery.

In both of the above scenarios, you usually won't see the white 'Battery' (SoC) bars increment upward after the regen.

- The third scenario is after you have depleted SoC to 4 bars or lower (I've never personally had lower than 4 bars visible). When this occurs, you will see a regen consisting of *three* green bars under any kind of engine load. If the SoC is low enough, IMA will stop assisting the engine until SoC climbs to at least 5 bars. You will generally maintain auto-stop with 4 bars on the SoC. You won't see visible regen while stopped (whether the engine is running or not).

On the '3-bar' regen, maintaining 50mpg on the iFCD is very difficult, especially at speeds greater than 45mph. If there's one good aspect of this '3-bar' regen condition, it's that the SoC meter will rapidly recharge - in the summertime, I notice my SoC will go from 4/8 up to about 7/8 within 3 minutes or so at steady-state cruise.

Once or twice, I've seen 8/8 bars after the '3-bar' event. IMA decided in this case to overcharge the battery, which is documented as being 'desirable' on occasion. However, the car then becomes 'assist-happy' trying to get rid of the excess (once it drops down to 7/8 bars, it stops).

Where I notice this happens is if I've been in some extreme stop-n-slow traffic, with a lot of assist events, and not much speed to build up to grab any braking regen.

The other condition is a gradual depletion of the battery, because I do a lot of coasting to stops, and don't always get a lot of brake regen (generally, I only get 3 bars of brake regen until I'm at about 20mph, where it decreases to one or zero bars until I put on the binders - and then, I only get 3 bars for a couple seconds).

As far as 'how often', which was the title of the post - under the stop-n-slow scenario, it's as often as I run into one of those really bad events - but usually about once every two weeks. The 'gradual depletion' regens are about once every week to two weeks, depending on how much driving I'm doing, and the ambient temperature (I notice that I take bars off the SoC *slower* in the warmer weather, which is opposite of what you'd think, given Ni-MH charge / discharge tendencies, relative to temperature).

I'll hold on to 6 bars SoC for a day or two, then 5 bars for another few days - which tells me the gauge isn't exactly 'linear' - I charge / deplete faster on the 'ends' than in the 'middle' ranges. I'll see the '1-bar' regens more frequently at 5/8 SoC, btw.