Arty101

I agree with Elliott. Get up to speed quickly since anytime the engine kicks in, the fuel economy drops. You might as well reduce the time the engine runs and have it begin the coast/maintain mode to increase your FE.

MY100thcar

It sure does !

If you drive on roads with a lot of hills that will lower your MPG.a lot !!!
PLEASE ..See my post from 6/5/13.in this thread.

I found the mode EV, Normal, or Sport did not do anything to change my MPG. but driving on flat roads makes a VERY BIG difference in MPG.

MY100thcar

You must be driving on roads with ALL hills (no flat roads) to only get 35MPG.

To add to my last post I copied my 6/5/13 post for you to read...........


"Well now that the winter is long gone I am getting around 40MPG again.
In the winter I avg. around 36-38 MPG when the temps were under 35-40 degs.

Found something this week, Driving on flat roads in NJ (No hills) I got OVER 43MPG for a 300+ mile trip doing 65 to 75 MPH most of the time. and not trying to conserve at all.
Here in NY we don't have many roads without hills.( at least where I drive), so I only get around 40 MPG
I have 4,750 miles on the car now."

cfpb

I find that no matter what I do, I consistently get better mileage on the highway than with city driving. I generally have no problem averaging over 40 mpg with highway driving, but with city driving I'm lucky if I get over 36. I thought with the hybrid, the city mileage would be as good or better than the highway mileage. Anyone else having the same experience?

Arty101

Driving in the city, where we have lots of hills, the ICE kicks in all the time and the FE drops like a rock. Even going down hills with the regen brakes doesn't recover much. So, yes.

ElliotB

A hill has two sides. What you loose going up it, you should gain (almost all of it) back going down it, as long as you coast down with the ICE off.

Neoxagon

From what I gather from other forums about "how to drive a hybrid" is that you want to spend the least amount of time accelerating, whether it be fast or slow.

I don't own a hybrid yet, so I don't know how true this is. It would be nice to hear back from you after a few tank refills to see if brisk acceleration helps you increase your overall MPG.

jim256

FWIW, here is a link to a Prius forum video on driving the current Prius for maximum mileage, giving a pretty good explanation of "pulse & glide". If you're interested, it takes about 10 minutes to view. I had a 2010 Prius for 3 1/2 years, averaged 55 mpg over that time (EPA 50 rating). I used pulse & glide on it, and on the ES 300h now. I'm getting 41 so far on it after 3 months. In the video, he gets into climate control settings and tire pressure at the conclusion--I never adopted those, used auto climate with and without A/C, and normal tire pressures, but did drive in ECO mode most of the time. The Prius dash display is different than ours, but our ECO gauge relative position corresponds to that on the Prius (charge, lower half, upper half, power). Pulse and glide is a little different than just accelerating briskly, and this video shows the technique. (sorry about the copy & paste- I can't seem to edit it to get a click thru link, but the URL is correct).

[URL="http://priuschat.com/threads/max-mpg-driving-techniques-youtube-video.79091/[/URL]

Squirrelsb

Pulse and glide sucks the fun out of driving IMO.

jim256

I don't disagree, but the thread has most postings about trying to get better mileage. The Power setting makes it a much more fun drive, even on the Prius!

ElliotB

Here is why I think the SPORT setting can achieve better FE for many drivers - the ICE tends to run more at lower speeds, especially when accelerating from a stop, so you tend to have more battery power to 'glide' at higher speeds (up to around 42 mph) which I believe give you more FE efficiently out of the batteries. Accelerating for a short distance under battery power probably is less efficient and contributes less to overall FE than cruising at 40mph for a long distance under battery power which racks on a lot of MPGs. (The comments are my opinion and not scientifically based.)

CurryPot

Thought I would chime in here. I've owned a Prius and an HS250h previously.

Over the years I have tried all sorts of tricks and have come to one simple conclusion. If I stick to the speed limit, I get the best overall mileage. Not sure why, but there it is. I've tracked 10,893 miles on Fuelly.com and most importantly, through the winter months.

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/currypotter/es300h

Almost all of this is in ECO mode. I'm in no hurry :P

Take a look at the month by month graph and you can see when winter started here in Seattle. As expected, the MPG tracks with change in temperature.

As with the Prius and HS250h, the aircon is a significant factor in MPG. I have a little fun run from Edmonds to Redmond, 17 miles, no highway to speak of. Top speed 45 MPH. At 72F I can get 54 MPG there and back (34 miles total). Put the aircon on and it drops to 48 MPG. Put the mode in NORMAL and it drops even more.

So I run the aircon for about 30 minutes each week, otherwise it stays off.

Back to the temperature thing. I park my car in the sun at work. The engine takes only a minute to warm up and as a result my commute home can be as good as 48.1 MPG. On the way to work in the cool morning, it is around 39 MPG at this time. In winter this dropped to 40 MPG and 35 MPG.

Oh, I do use a sun shade in the window. Not entirely confident about the longevity of the Nuluxe dashboard.

If I stopped my little 2 mile trips to the QFC, I could see my average hit 44 MPG for a tank.

Arty101

I've got to learn to chill and not rush, or not chill and still not rush. I've getting 2 mpg less the past week, even though I'm pulsing and gliding. It may be because of having the AC on with temps in the 80s to 90s the last week

Sandollars

I followed a slug bug my son was driving from Brigham City, Utah to Los Angeles California we had purchased up there. We were traveling from 55MPH to 65MPH the whole way. Over the 700 mile trip I averaged 46.7MPG.

markwill12

Interesting thread. I got my ES 300h on Saturday and it's the first hybrid I have ever driven, let alone owned. So, I have quite the learning curve.

My commute has a very slight decline (averaged) for the first 3 miles or so, then a generally flat section of about 5 miles and finally a relatively steep uphill up a freeway (the start of 520 in Redmond, for any locals) of about 3 miles. So, about an 11 mile round trip.

Like a lot of folks, I found myself playing the game on Monday on my first commute to work. It was fun!! I averaged 55.9 to the start of the final stage but the uphill (and fast traffic) killed that and when I turned into work I was at - wait for it - EXACTLY 40.0 mpg. Clearly a car that delivers it to it's spec. I did find that amusing.

Anyway, I had been pretty light on the accelerator on that first day (and yesterday too) and have been getting great mpg. However, I have been playing with whether it's best to accelerate quickly to cruising speed and then cruise or gradually accelerate.

I read some comments about folks who drive around in Sport mode everywhere. As a newbie, I had initially assumed that this would be poor for my mpg's, so I wasn't using it. Then I read that the tradeoff is that it gets me to cruising speed quicker - and then I can ease off and cruise.

So, today I drove the entire 11 mile commute to work in Sport mode. I basically just drove the old way - I'm a pretty gentle driver by nature but wasn't letting car after car overtake me today, as I did on Monday. I basically just went with the flow and drive in a non-hybrid way GENERALLY - but with the occasional easing off the pedal when I reached cruising speed.

And when I turned into work.... it ticked over from 39.8 to 40.0

It's like it knows!

Awesome!

Mark