Different kind of mileage challange

[jsharpe]

I normally keep the display on the HSI screen but on a recent trip I happened to be scrolling through the others and when on the 5 min average screen the data gave me an idea for a different kind of mileage games.

For those of us geographically challenged people that live at elevations which will keep us from being competitive with those at sea level for things like 60+ mpg tanks, etc. there would seem to be a whole category of big hill based challenges. I apologize in advance for the quality of the following snapshots but they should be enough to illustrate the idea.

Challenge 1 - Get the most number of full stacks of regen cars. The example below shows a simple case of single big hill. It should be trivially easy to reproduce the "score" below since all you need to do is depleat the battery on the way up and recharge it on the way down. In order to do better than this you would need to use up some of the battery on the way down to make room for additional recharge periods. So an overall very long steep hill with some short alternating uphill sections would be ideal.






Challenge 2 - Get all the bars on the the screen filled to the top. Since once again this should be easy to do with a long hill or a bit of patience, the tie breaker would be the person with the most regen cars in addition to all stacks showing 100mpg. In the example below I didn't think of the game until after the hill flattened out but it would have been fairly easy to take the downhill a bit slower to fill all 6 bars.

[VABeachPrius]

Just throwing this out there; while a fun challenge, the more regen bars or cars there are on the consumption screen, the more inefficiently you are driving the car. When I have seen 100+ mpg segments (for more than 10 miles), there are no regen cars or bars on my consumption display. While hills propose new challenges, maybe a personal challenge would be in order on how to overcome the hill challenges that are unique to you. Pass on what you learn for those that care to implement your findings.

For example, on a long downgrade near Charlottesville, Virginia, I approached the crest slowly so that when my speed built up by the end of the hill, I was still able to glide down the entire section without needed to regen brake at all.

[ken1784]

No regen mark is difficult to accomplish.

Ken@Japan

[VABeachPrius]

Ken,

Sorry for off topic.

Has anyone broke the 125 mpg mark yet? I thought I heard you mention this in another post for a gen 3/

[jsharpe]

Originally Posted by ken1784

No regen mark is difficult to accomplish.

Ken@Japan

Awesome! I knew someone was up to it.

[cmalberto]

Man o man...I can't compete with any of that.

What you guys need to include on you awesome MPH stats is your average MPH. Seems that you guys don't move very fast.

--Mickey

[jsharpe]

Originally Posted by VABeachPrius

Just throwing this out there; while a fun challenge, the more regen bars or cars there are on the consumption screen, the more inefficiently you are driving the car. When I have seen 100+ mpg segments (for more than 10 miles), ...

This is very dependent on the "hill" in question. For mild ones I agree with you. But some of "hills" around here are way to steep and long for this approach to apply. For some of them it's a challenge just to minimize the forced "B" mode and friction braking that happens after the battery gets full. These "hills" are not the kind you could ever consider coasting over. The rather mild pass I was on in the original example climbs from roughly 8000ft to over 11,000 feet over a few miles of very curvy roads. If you attempted to coast down without heavy regen, and engine or friction braking you would die a few turns from the top. And coasting up wouldn't even get you around the 1st turn (out of about 40).

The interesting point is that there are a number of different kinds of approaches that apply to different kinds road conditions. For example there are many threads with techniques on maximizing city mileage, and quite a few for gentle hill highway driving. But not much information for those with a bit more in the way of elevation challenges.

p.s. Our V does fantastic on these kinds of roads. When not worrying about any mileage games it has plenty of power to fly up as fast as I care to go and enough stick to make it fun, even when mashing the pedal we still get 2-6 times better mileage than some of our earlier cars on the same section of road. I do feel a bit guilty about the amount of tire I'm leaving on each turn though. I wonder if there it's possible to buy rubber offsets.

[Son of Gloin]

OK ... so I do NOT own a 3rd gen and I also KNOW this is off the original topic a tad ... but I just gotta ask the following question.

Originally Posted by ken1784

No regen mark is difficult to accomplish.

Ken@Japan

Does the above mean / suggest that IF I'm consistently getting, say, 45-60 mpg in five minute increments in my Gen II on longer, highway drives AND there are no regen symbols showing within each five minute bar graph that I'm actually "maximizing" efficiency under the current driving conditions and speeds? I'm really asking because I frequently have very few regen symbols on longer, highway trips ...

... and all this time, I had thought that maybe I was doing something wrong!!!

[ken1784]

Originally Posted by Son of Gloin

Does the above mean / suggest that IF I'm consistently getting, say, 45-60 mpg in five minute increments in my Gen II on longer, highway drives AND there are no regen symbols showing within each five minute bar graph that I'm actually "maximizing" efficiency under the current driving conditions and speeds?

No.
The key points are full 6 bars AND no regen symbols.
By the way, the full 40km/L means 94.1 mpg, a little less than the US 100 mpg display.

Ken@Japan