Hypermiling the Sonata Hybrid

[owlmaster08]

Thought I would start a thread for hypermiling the Sonata Hybrid. Wayne had some discussion in another thread but thought I would start a new one.

[darrelldb1]

Mine seems to get to 20mph from a stop in EV, then switches to ICE. I have found that it is pretty easy to get it up to 40mph in EV if the battery is not too far below 50%.

Simply let it reach 20mph, when it switches to ICE let off the gas and let it go back to EV, then continue accelerating. Of course you need a relatively flat stretch of road for this.

[milburnr]

Normally around our immediate area, with really bad stoplights, we average about 35mpg just being light on acceleration, and N-coasting down hills. But a few days ago, I managed to maintain about 50mpg by doing something different. I would accel on EV, engine would come on, let off the pedal to trigger EV again, push some more, etc. Basically a pulse and glide, only it was just a few seconds of pulse each time. The HSH seems to allow a pretty fast start on EV mode before it kicks on the ICE, so if you do this each time it goes into EV mode, you can accelerate pretty well that way it seems.

Unfortunately here most of the stoplights are at the bottoms of hills and they tend to be red no matter how hard you try, so there's not much chance to accelerate flat...

[fishnrib]

Copied from jglopic member of Hyundai-forums

"Has anyone played around with the manual mode of the gear shifter in the HSH? I have started to do so a little, and I have reached an interesting discovery.

I do a good bit of my commute at 45 mph, and there are several areas around my house limited to 30 and 35 mph. I have noticed previously that even when cruising at steady speed in all these areas, the hybrid system barely charges. The other day, at 30 mph, I popped the gear shifter into manual, and it was holding 4th gear. I dropped it to 3rd, the econ indicator barely moved, and the battery started charging more rapidly, thereby engaging EV mode much more often than if the transmission were in D.

Today on my way to work, I was cruising at 45 mph. Going into manual mode, the transmission was in 6th gear. I dropped to 5th, and again the battery started charging much faster. When it went into EV mode, the battery also discharged faster than normal. I then let the battery recharge in 5th, then kicked the transmission to 6th when EV mode re-engaged. I found that I could go about as long in EV mode as it took to charge the battery between EV modes. That's right, I was in EV mode almost 50% of the time!

Normally on that stretch of my commute (4-5 miles), I get one decent stretch of EV mode while cruising at 45. I got three today."

I think he is on to a great hypermiling technique.

[xcel]

Hi Tom:

Maybe so with some thought into when you can/want to instill some more charging and not just for charging's sake?

Wayne