Schwa,

Point taken. I still think the average (wo)man on the street only cares about how far down the road their gasoline is going to take them, (environmental impact concerns aside) and I think it is relatively safe to say that the HCH is getting better mileage than the article reported.

BTW, I am new here and really appreciate all the great information you folks have contributed. It has helped me to better understand my car very quickly.

Thanks
Vince

 

I agree. The only way to get a hybrid to suck up so much gasoline is to drive REALLY fast, on hilly terrain, and with the AC on maximum. Personally, I'd like to see the effect such driving habits have on conventional vehicles.

I typically get 42 MPG out of my HCH because I'm kind of a leadfoot. But this week I've been driving very conservatively and have been getting 47 MPG.

 

I'm tempted to go all out and see how low I can get my mpg. I should see if I can get <10mpg on a trip just for fun. I'd probably be the first hch person to achieve such a goal.

 

Right after your done, your red-hot engine should be able to deliver maximum hyper-milage after you reset the trip meter.

 

Heh. Well, I think I'll to it today since gas prices dropped a bit. I might as well get gas before they jump up for the holliday. I'll report back tonight

 

Just mash the pedal constantly, that should get good low MPGs.

 

WAYNE, DON"T READ THIS IT WILL DEPRESS YOU!


I tried my best. Put on the AC. turned off econ. Opened the windows. drove with a mixture of sport and drive. Accelerated with the pedal down all the time. Waited until the last minute to break for lights and trafic. Passed any cars I could. Kept the speed around 10mph over the speed limit (for those cops out there I was on a closed course as far as you know). I lowered my tires to 30 PSI as rated on the door jam. I did every thing I could think of... End result was 24.2 mpg over 15 miles. It was more work than hypermileing. I'm sure if I made a practice of it I could get it lower but it was very hard to achieve this. I should try this once in the winter. That should drop it a bit more. BTW. The engine realy was hot when I was done with the trip. I opened my door and I could feel the heat from the engine compartment excape through that piece between engine compartment and where the door opens.

 

Hahaha.. 24.2mpg! That's pretty impressive, but I still have you all beat, although granted I don't have a hybrid. My record lowest FE in my Civic HX was something like 15.7mpg at Buttonwillow Raceway. In my S2000 I calculated that the track mileage worked out to something like 8.4mpg! Still, I'm actually pretty impressed that you could get it all the way down to 24mpg on public roads at all. I guess at least it establishes a bottom floor for the WORST you can do, so we know if a magazine gets 34mpg, they're still 10mpg above absolutely maniac driving.

 

Well, its also summer. So its not the lowest one could get. Maybe when its -10 out I'll try again and see what I can do. Though it will be dangerous because there will likely be ice on the roads so heavy acceleration and brakeing will be difficult.

 

I don't think it would be that much worse since you'd get the engine up to operating temp extremely quickly in the winter. The problem seems to be more that when hypermiling in the winter, the engine barely generates enough heat to stay in a good operating temp range anyway.