Sorry I don't have the time to search or look through all the pages to see if it's been covered before but...

...in the past couple weeks my HCH2 has done this 2 or 3 times. I've had the cruise control set on the highway and as I'm climbing a hill my MPH will drop so the engine rpm's jump to help maintain the set cruise speed. We'll crest the hill but the rpms stayed somewhere between 3-4k....FOR AN ENTIRE MINUTE OR TWO!

I know the rpms might hang around for a few seconds to make sure we don't need that much power anymore but the rpms just sat there, somewhere between 3,000-4,000rpms for literally more than a minute, maybe even two minutes.

When I took cruise control off and coasted the rpms came down, and I was only using cruise control because i was in a hurry and wasn't concerned about my mpg at the time. So it's not a big deal but I just thought it was odd and was wondering if any other HCH2 owners have experienced this?

 

Eric,

Yes, that is typical of what I have seen on the rare instance when I used cruise. It is one of the reasons that I don't use it anymore! It just irritated me to have the engine revving like that (and wasting gas) for no good reason.

Eric

 

Well, I haven't had that particular problem, even though I use cruise constantly (maybe as much as 70% of my driving). What I have noticed, though, is that every now and then, while going downhill and the engine at least feels like it's sealed and in EV mode, my mpg gauge actually starts dropping down to nearly nothing (like if I were gunning the thing), then shoots up to max mpg (like you'd expect).

 

I will accelerate into a rise/hill and coast going up and then re-engage cruise when going down at the needed speed. This avoids high rpms and stressin the CVT

 

HI
I think with the hybrids the hch2 in particular the tach just indicates rpms of the engine and the elecric motor generator I would bet after climbing the hill with the cruise it was charging the battery back up. I noticed it does this when you back off after accelerating hard. I have also noticed that accelerating up to speed quickly actually helps the overall mpg. I dont use cruise to much to hilly and too much traffic. But it has changed the way I drive any car.
SEE YOU AT HYBRID FEST MADISON

 

Did you observe the assist/regen gauge while this was happening? It's likely that you used plenty of assist while the engine was revving up the hill. If it was a long hill or your battery charge was low to begin with, your SOC may have been down to four bars when you got to the top of the hill. When you reached the top you no longer needed the power to climb but the IMA was hungry for some regen. So it kept the RPMs high while cranking out four bars of regen to get your batteries back up to six bars of charge.

 

This exact same behavior happened for me, and it is why I don't use cruise either. I also noticed my fuel economy was worse with cruise than when I didn't use it, even though I've been (rightly) accused in the past of being inconsistent with my gas pedal pressure.

Aneil

 

I used cruise control on a trip from Portland, OR to Vancouver, BC up I-5. This is flat for about 200 miles and hilly for about 100 miles. The cruise control does tend to hang on to revs after cresting a hill. Overall mileage was about 47 mpg with speeds at 65 to 75 mph. When I go back in the fall, I'll try it without cruise control on.

 

Thanx for the replies guys.

I don't believe the car was keeping the revs up that high just to recharge the batteries as the hills weren't that steep or long at all. It was just weird to be going long at 65-70mph after cresting the hill or even going downhill and still seeing the revs above 3k rpms.

You know how some cars with regular automatic transmissions can sense when you're going up a hill and will hold a gear? My moms '99 CR-V does this like no other, and even after you get back on completely level ground (her CRV has 115+k miles) usually it annoyingly continues to hold the gear. That's kind of what this is like, like the car is being fooled for some odd reason.

 

My previous car was a 1997 CRV. Whenever I used the CC on hilly terrain it would always lag, both in downshifting to maintain a proper speed (it would drop by 10-15 mph on steep hills unless I goosed the gas) and shifting back up to a higher gear once I crested the hill. Unless I was on flat terrain I just decided that the CC was pretty much useless. I had chalked it up to the engine being underpowered for that 1st gen CRV. Maybe it was the CC technology used by Honda that was at fault.