So I just picked up an 03 HCH with 74000 miles on it, and so far I love it

It JUST had the IMA Battery replaced at 69k miles, and it's running pretty good: But I do have two minor concerns.

Firstly; when I'm driving along and let off the gas (in traffic, etc), my car will have a pretty significant slowdown right away. I'm guessing this is the turbine or whatever is used to kick the battery charging on, as obviously the charging meter shoots right up and if I leave my foot on the gas in even the smallest amount, it won't engage. Every now and then, however, there's a pretty big jump..or drop, I suppose, in speed. Everything still feels tight and relatively smooth, no grinding or anything crazy, it's just a drop in speed that's almost as strong as if you were to tap on the breaks.


Second: My driveway has a fairly steep grade when I back out (my parents came to visit in their Prius and it bottomed out when we loaded it up), when I back up the engine growls pretty heavily, more than any other time I'm driving, to the point that I almost worry. The solution has been to simply back into the driveway so I'm going up the slope in Drive, rather than Reverse, but I'm just curious if this happens with other people.

Are there ways to actively drive the HCH in order to get the most out of your gas mileage? I know keeping speed modest and making sure tires are filled etc etc helps. It's almost seemed like if i can get away with it, keeping my foot just a hair on the gas even when I'm coasting down gets me a little more out of the gas engine because it doesn't kick in the IMA Battery charging (which slows me down pretty quick, see above).

Thanks for all your help, and I'm glad to be a part of the hybrid community!

 

Hi Jim,
My '04 does the same things you described.
Yesterday I had the car loaded up to bring my son's stuff back to college...a fridge in the back seat, along with a bike, books, etcetera. I had to back up the slope at the end of the driveway because some of the stuff in the trunk was being noisy, and I wanted to readjust the load. The car kind of grunted as I stepped on the gas going up the slope in reverse. The CVT takes a bit of getting used to.

The slowing down that you describe when you take the foot off the gas is the regenerative braking; you've noticed that the charge meter goes into the green charge mode when this happens, and the car slows. It's pretty noticeable when descending a long, steep hill. If you depress the gas pedal ever so slightly it will cancel out the regen as you have discovered with your coasting theory. Depending on the state of charge of my IMA battery, I will either let it regen to charge the battery up, or cancel the regen depending on the situation.

If your car is a lean burn ULEV model, one way to get higher mpgs while cruising along is to let up on the gas pedal ever so slightly while still giving it some gas. You'll see the mpg meter jump up in increments. Practice with it a bit to find the balance between letting off the gas just enough to get into lean burn mode without letting off so much that you get the regen that would slow the car too much. If you have a California cleaner emissions-rated SULEV model, it doesn't have lean burn mode.