Archives

It's been a tough past few weeks. I'm still logging every trip, and thought I was doing alright the first week of this tank, and then things seemed like they went downhill- and not in the way that us hypermillers want. (sorry, bad pun)

3 times during the past 7 days, I got stuck with Forced Charge.

I live at the top of a fairly good sized hill, so, in the morning when I'd absolutely love to be able to take advantage of it, and get a good regen, I can't since the car's not warmed up. So, instead- as soon as I get out of my driveway, I FAS until I get to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. 2 of the Forced Charges started as soon as I started up and accelerated out onto the main road. Whether or not the final charge depletion bringing me down to 4 bars is due to restarting the car, or if braking/steering while in FAS sucks it up, I really don't know.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to have a charge reserve to avoid this when I get home and park, since the pitch and height of my hill cause me to need to use 3-4 bars of assist to get up it, so I always end up with my charge at 5 bars. The angle of the hill won't even allow me to crawl up it, without pushing my tach past 2,000.

Add to all this, night temperatures have dropped in the past week, so the car's had more to make up for during warm up.

BUT....
I got my best tank out of this last fill up, calculated at the pump as 10.115 gallons for 629.4 miles, for a total of 62.224 mpg calculated- by far my best tank yet! :Banane09:

So, perhaps my skills have just improved enough, so that in the first week I had a better overall mpg- enough to make up for the second weeks havocs.

As I said at first, I'm constantly logging all my segments- I guess it's about time I actually look at the log, instead of just writing it down. Maybe even with the forced charges, I'm still doing alright regardless?

Over all, I'm happy, but still trying my darnedest to figure out just what I need to do to get my charge up more on my way home, so I'm not depleted when I pull into the driveway, and starting my day off poorly with a forced charge.

depending on your commute maybe you can do some driving with load on the hills and doing a little regenning on the way down.

Also, try to use the pack as little as possible during accelerations. That might help keep the charge up and help you avoid the forced regen.

So, instead- as soon as I get out of my driveway, I FAS until I get to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill
I'd suggest not doing FAS on a stone-cold engine, simply because you have perfect opportunity for zero or negative load on the engine going downhill which is struggling to reach operating temperature: The worst time of fuel economy.

It would be better to begin high load from your stop sign as you accelerate out onto your main road with a partially warmed engine. Warmup will also take place more quickly.
Depending on the grade of your hill you could likely touch the brake and activate some recharge which may help a little with your SOC.

I also have a hill to a stop sign which is .4 miles from my driveway. I face-out so load is minimum. 3/4 of the way to this stop sign is only enough grade to keep her ICE-ON rolling in N, while the last 1/4 is steeper so I go to D and ride regen down to the sign, check traffic and go.

At work I park 2nd to the top floor of our parking garage face out. After work I start and shift to D, nudge her just enough, and go to N and roll across 3 blocks of parking deck, down several levels to the gate where I shut her down.
The gate rises and I restart, nudge just enough again then back to N and roll another 3 blocks to a stop sign, check traffic, switch to D and go.
That is about .6 miles of the highest MPG I could hope for from a cold engine.

This has worked wonders for me and was wondering about any thoughts?
-Steve

MoGryph-Sounds to me like you are doing extremely well! This stretch of weather has made it really tough to maintain reasonable numbers. To be pushing out record tanks is a very big deal!