Recharge going down

Marcus. T where in northern NJ do you live and what route do you drive?

 

Route 46 to Route 80 mainly - Fairfield area to Parsippany area. Some back roads but not much. All flat so no real regen gained except when I press EV to slow or stop at lights. Never go over 65 mph on any of the roads. Try to stay under 63 mph whenever possible. Could never make it on full EV one way until last week. As weather gets really cold that will go away too I'm sure but for now, full EV one way is nice. Never expected it when only getting 11 - 12 estimated EV range and needed to go approx 14 miles. Pleasantly surprised so far. And nice to see charged EV over 15 now when I leave home. Never thought that was possible as 11 - 12 range was the norm before.

One last thing, since I started doing this I now look forward to traffic lights on RT 46. Used to hate them before.

 

It isn't. It doesn't. It won't.

Forget what the impression you got and look at it this way: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HV/EV BUTTON.

The other day, I had lots of running around to do and only a single charge to work with. 71 miles was the total distance. I kept pushing that button. Whenever I was approaching a stop and upon acceleration afterward. With the slowing in EV, it would regenerate more electricity since the engine would shut off sooner. With the speeding up in HV, the surplus energy from the energy would generate electricity since the system is designed to run the engine at optimum power.

The end result was 20 miles of EV display on the drive-ratio screen. That's well beyond the battery's capacity. The charge-level never exceeded the long-life threshold of 85% though. Using up EV when you can allows space for extra electricity later. It's a win-win situation.

In other words, this is the plug-in version of hypermiling. You are taking advantage of a feature built into the design of the system to achieve higher efficiency.

 

All I'm saying is anyone who complains about having 15 EV range when car was new and now down to 12 - 13 might be able to get it back up to 15 this way. Whether they really get 15 when it says 15 is entirely up to how they drive. For me so far, it seems to be helping. And my overall MPG has definitely increased by using more EV miles.

 

Yes - but I think that proves my point. Whatever you do, the car draws 3kw (or whatever the figure is) from the charge overnight. In the past, when you drove it fully charged on HV until the return journey, you limited its power to capture regeneration charge, so you only got 11-12 miles EV out of it. Still not sure exactly what was happening with the EV button press, but now that you are using EV from the start you can recapture all the regenerated electricity and get 15 miles out of the same overnight charge.

The other point to make is that we all get better at getting the most out of the car as we drive it more. If you had previously tried driving in EV TO work and not made it, and the weather was similar, I'd suggest it is more likely that your driving style changed rather than the car somehow taking in more charge.

 

sorry, that was to Marcus's post at the bottom of the previous page, didn't notice we had skipped on.
John1701a, ah, OK, that makes some sense, and I'll have to play with it. But it doesn't seem to fit what Marcus originally said. His claim was that, with a full charge that he kept until the end of his return journey, he only used to get 11-12 miles. With the HV/EV button he gets 14-15 - not in terms of range, or even total miles shown as traveled in EV, but that he can switch to EV 14-15 miles from home and still get there. On the assumption that the battery is at 85% SOC both times that he switches over, I don't see how the normal analysis explains it.

 

Yup, there are opportunities like that available that is easy to overlook. As ownership progresses, we each grow more aware of what influences MPG. Knowing you can squeeze out more later is nice.

 

But I didn't willingly discover this. It just so happened that one morning I only had .3 EV available and figured there must be some way to get it moving back up a little. I have no hills I can use so I just started turning EV on whenever I needed to brake. Once fully stopped, I turn it off. I knew from past experience that once EV went to zero I had no way to get any back without hills. I drove this way to work and all the way home. By the time I got home I had 4.1 or so EV miles I could have used. I hadn't used them as I wanted to see how much I could regen back just using the EV button when braking.

The next morning I was shocked to see my full charge EV range was higher than it had ever been. Driven this way ever since and this morning had 15.3 EV available after the full charge completed. Others have said that's just an estimate and you will never get 15.3 miles in real life. I drove all the way to work (14 miles) and still had a little left. Was never able to drive all the way in or home in full EV so at least for today, 15.3 showed and 15.3 was achieved.

Would never have learned this if we didn't have a power failure one night and I couldn't charge at all!

Maybe it's just a quirk with my PIP but I'm going with it as long as I can.

 

I think you are fooling yourself on what is happening.

When you switch from HV to EV after you have accelerated and thus regen back some EV miles you are just using gas to recharge the battery instead of the wall socket. The algorithm that figures out the estimated miles you get from a full charge gets tricked and thinking you can go a couple more miles on a charge. And of course, it averages this in some way with many past trips. So then the next day when you do a full wall socket charge the "number" it displays goes up a bit. But you still have (approx) the same battery charge in terms of kwh available and how far you actually go still depends on how you actually drive and the terrain you actually drive that day.

In general, it makes no sense to charge the battery using gas. Of course, when you must slow down and or use the brake pedal to regen you do want to put that energy into the battery. Whether you take it right back out by driving in EV mode or leave in there and accumulate it by using HV mode doesn't really make much of a difference except that you do want to bunch together all your HV driving so that you minimize the number of warmup cycles.

Mike

 

Echoing Bisco....but yes...yes you are.

 

I'm never pressing the accelerator when I brake in EV mode. The red line that signifies engine on usually never appears. All I see is the green line showing charge going back into the battery. Since doing this my MPG for over approx 350 miles has gone from 81 to 92. I'll keep fooling myself as long as the trend keeps going up in my favor.

My 2010 averaged about 53/54 MPG. I thought 81 was great in the PIP (not being able to charge at work).

This current 92 is more than I could ever hope for.

 

Again, you are misunderstanding. If you accelerate to 50 mph (for example), using gas, take your foot off the gas, then switch to EV, then coast or lightly break to a stop you are using gas to charge the battery.

Mike

 

Then how is my MPG still going significantly up?

 

Mike.....I dont think he fully understands the "range" number.

Mike is correct, its been hashed over time and time again here, using ICE to charge battery results in LOWER overal MPG.

And as I said earlier, ONLY WHEN going further then your battery allows, using ICE on acceleration DOES bump up EV "estimate" since the computer does not see the battery taking such a hit on accel...which in turn makes the "range" higher.

in the end, the estimated range means absolutely NOTHING.....

when you get your EV range over 15miles, go and drive it faster.....you will see you wont be able to go 15miles, or drive it much slower and you will see you can go 17+ miles.

 

Why would I want to "drive it faster"? I drive normally like I always do and am getting better MPG and more EV range then I ever did before. The only difference is I'm now using the EV button whenever I need to stop at a light or slow significantly down. I understand why you all say that is really only using gas to regen the EV range but that's not what I'm seeing. MPG has definitely been going up since I started driving this way.

Would be nice if someone who complained about losing EV range since they first got their PIP tried it to see if their range starts going up. That would be the best test.

 

Gentlemen, let's call this one a "lost cause" and move on.

 

I only tried offering the OP a possible way of seeing if his EV range could start going up instead of down. But you are right, until someone with this problem tries what is so far working for me, it is a lost cause.

Over and out.