I've just purchased my 2008 Civic Hybrid and wanted to know what some of the best things to do to get the highest MPG. Also let me know what your terrain is like and if you drive more in the City vs. the Highway. I'm mostly on a flat smooth road with a few hills tossed in. I'll be driving mostly 70% highway, 30% city. Thanks.

 

My HCH2 just turned a year with a mostly highway, mostly flat daily commute. My top seven FE items are:

- Drive the speed limit. Every 5 mph above ~50mph takes 5mpg off.
- Avoid having to brake. Anticipate stoplights (time for greens) and let off throttle early as you approach a slowdown (light, offramps, traffic...)
- Balance the throttle. At slowdowns, I try to avoid having more than 1-2 green regen bars by pressing the throttle.
- Avoid hard accelleration. I try to keep them below 2000rpms or so.
- Dont crank the AC. This can also take 5mpg off.
- Keep tires inflated properly. Run them at least at the mfg. suggested pressure. I run mine pretty hard to lower rolling resistance.
- Keep a FE log. Use this sites tank log to see how you are doing. Use your trip FE reset to see how your FE changes on your daily commute. You will probably start learning what both your driving style and other factors (weather, traffic) does to your FE quickly.

There are many other tips/tricks here and at other sites. Enjoy the fuel savings!

 

Congratulations!!! The first thing I would do is pump your tires to a higher level. I'm running a "conservative" (for around here) 40psi and it makes a big difference on highway driving. I've read people with tires as high as 50psi. Mine had fallen to 35psi over the winter and I just topped them off. Now I'm kicking myself for not doing it again sooner.

You will want to learn to glide. When you are at the top of a hill, let your foot completely off the gas and watch your iFCD raise up to 100 mpg. When it hits 100, you will start to see green bars of regen. Gradually increase pressure on the gas pedal until the green bars go away, but not so hard that you see white assist bars. When you are gliding, the intake valves are closed at you are using no gas (0gpm) even though your iFCD reads 100mpg. I find I can glide for miles on slight downhills and it is my biggest HCH strategy.

On the up hills, you need to practice. Your goal would be to enter the hill a little faster than your cruising speed (hopefully with momentum from another hill), and slowly bleed speed until you crest the hill at your minimum comfort speed. For example, hit the bottom at 65mph, and bleed speed until 55mph at the top and then recollect speed on the other side. If you drive the same route daily, you will learn how hard you need to gas it during the hill with time. I find the cruise control to be very bad on hills, and while I sometimes use it in the flats, I always turn it off in the hills.

Another biggie is to reset your trip B every time you get behind the wheel. Learn what your MPG is normally at certain spots in your drive and try to beat them every day.

For any time in the city, basic hypermile techniques that are good for any car help quite a bit. Drive without your brakes as much as possible--anticipate traffic and stop lights up ahead and try to never stop. You can find quite a few tips like this here and on cleanmpg.com.

BTW, my terrain is very hilly and my commuting is very suburban on 50mph-60mph, wide streets with lights only about every 1.5 miles. About 30% of the HCH miles are on the interstate though.

 

I am in total agreement with what the previous posters stated.

But I would suggest you give yourself a few evenings to read and understand Tarabell's article. This is a MUST read and in it you'll find a wealth of consolidated wisdom that will help you achieve your FE goals sooner.

You'll find her article here.

Cheers;

MSantos

 

Of all the techniques I think avoiding braking gives you the most bang for the buck, especially when taken to the extreme.

The hybrid system can only recover 30% of the kinetic energy.
That means 70% is wasted.
I'd rather waste 0%.
I do this when I go as far as possibe once I have used the gas to get up to speed.
Naturally this means leaving a ton of room in front of you.

 

Thank you for letting me know about the article. It was very interesting. I'll have to practice some of the ideas expressed.

 

After driving the Hybrid for about 3 months, I find that I could also get relatively good mileage in CITY driving by going feather light on the accelerator pedal. I drive according to what I see on the iFE meter & the CHRG / ASST meter. Try to let the iFE go as high as possible after accelerating to target speed will help increase fuel economy. This could be done by P&G (look at the CHRG /ASST meter and ensure nothing is lighted). As a guide, try to drive with iFE at 75 MPG.

I recalled msantos mentioned that the best mpg is achieved with battery fully charge. Use battery only to ASST pick up. when battery is full, the system will not (most likely not) go into CHRG mode and thus will not drag (slow down) vehicle even if we do not use accelerator to do P&G. I find driving in CITY gives the Hybrid car every opportunity to CHRG whenever decelerate thereby helps keep battery full. Ideally, the only time we would CHRG the battery is by converting KINETIC energy to useful CHEMICAL energy. In doing so, it also helps retard the car.

Whenever we are off the accelerator, the vavles are closed, no fuel is injected. iFE verifies that by showing 100 MPG. This is an IMPORTANT point to note and use it whenever traffic conditions allow.

 

One of the biggest gains I've seen was achieved just by altering my route. Choosing a flatter route with fewer lights was both faster and more efficient even though it's 5 km longer.

The bulk of my drive is on a 70 km/hr hilly route. I've found that keeping the speed above 70 results in better fuel economy as well. There is some sort of sweet spot between 65 and 85 or so that seems to permit low-consumption cruising. Speed losses on hills are also minimized in this range. Someone must have the actual numbers but I don't.

I've noticed another sweet spot right around 70 that will cause the IFC to remain nearly constant but will kick in three bars of assist with a light accelerator touch. I haven't found this to be very reproducible but on medium uphill grades I can maintain ~68-72 km/hr in this elusive mode.

Other things to note:
- When coming to a stop keep the foot on the brake. I used to have a habit where I would try to make the stop super-smooth by easing up on the pedal just before coming to rest. That may cause the auto-stop to disengage and the engine will start up. It sometimes mysteriously stops on its own after a few seconds though, which is counter to what I've read.
- If you live somewhere cold, avoid the front defrost as much as possible and don't crank the heat.
- Add pipe insulation to the front grill as recommended in a number of articles here and elsewhere.
- The auto climate control works well but I've read that it can cause the AC to come on without any indication that it has done so.
- Don't warm up the car and some advocate a block heater. Do the math before investing in this! It makes sense if you're paying for electricity cheaply but otherwise it's not a real economical advantage. Your mileage will certainly improve but you're most likely just moving your money to the utility from the gas station.
- If you live somewhere warm (good for you!) lay off the AC.
- Always balance safety with economy! I don't recommend traveling under the speed limit, ever. Don't be an obstacle that will encourage the aggressives to pass where they shouldn't or ride your bumper. On multi-lane roads this is less of a concern but 10% less than the posted limit is probably dangerous in most situations. Turn on your flashers if you insist on being a hazard to navigation.
- Read everything relevant but keep in mind not all of the advice is absolutely good, including mine.

-b

 

The entire goal isn't to get the highest MPG, but to use the least amount of fuel. While taking a different route can be very beneficial, you have to consider the amount of fuel used to get from A to B. I have many routes I can take to work, and the one that gets me the best MPG is also the longest. In fact, it's about twice as long as my "normal" route, and only benefits my MPG by about 1 or 2 MPG. I'll sacrifice the MPG for saving more fuel overall. Granted, my normal commute is barely long enough to get the engine and fluids up to operating temperature (4 to 5 miles on average).

Anyway, just wanted to bring that bit of info to light FWIW. I tend to average 40-45 MPG depending on the time of year (lower in winter obviously). That's a 50% increase over my 2003 Civic so I consider that to be a good thing.

 

This is quite true. In my case the extra 5 km is only a small percentage of my route. It also only makes sense to take the longer route when it's cold enough that auto-stop won't be kicking in after the first few lights. As always, do the math to make sure what you're doing makes economic sense.

Mark