Conserving power in standstill traffic

Barely inching is the worst, eats up the charge then starts in on the gas.

If traffic's completely stopped at least you can shut down.

 

Why don't you just shut off the car?

Park won't do anything different besides giving your foot a rest. If you need heat or AC then use the ECO button to minimize HVAC usage. That should decrease battery usage.

I usually roll the windows down and shut off the car waiting for train crossing.

 

Did you have climate control system on by any chance? I.e blasting the A/C, or the heater on to keep you warm? If you had the heater on, that forces the engine to run to provide heat. If you had the A/C on, then it uses the traction battery to run the A/C compressor/fans. When the battery gets low enough, gas engine fires up to recharge it...

 

Then there really is nothing else you can do to conserve energy.

 

There's just no way around it. Stop n go traffic is a real mileage killer.

The only thing I find that somehow slightly helps is when creeping in EV not to push the energy bar up to the middle to try to accelerate faster, because it barely makes a difference anyway. The electric motor is just not that strong.

Initially at the start you may need to just to break from standstill. But as soon as you start moving and you've given your car a reasonable push, keep that bar as near to the left as possible because it will still accelerate with only the slightest difference than if you used all the EV bar area. Or you can neutral glide also to the next stop.

Also (if not already), use the Eco mode when using AC.

 

Could change your work hours, or find another route? Just a thought.

 

If your stopped with your foot on the brake then it doesn't matter what the transmission setting your using, No energy is being used to move the car. Once you take your foot off the gas then you use battery energy for the built in creep. The car will only move about 1/4 of a mile total before the battery needs to recharge.

 

neutral is only good for saving gas when gliding with the ICE off. But if the ICE is running, it is pretty useless because the ICE won't recharge the battery so you lose more. When stopped, putting it in Park like you did is better.

As for saving on AC, put it at automatic climate control in Eco mode and the highest you can bare that still blows a little cold air on your skin. You don't really need it at a specific temp to feel comfortable. All you need is the sensation of chilled dehumidified air intermittently blowing on your skin, at say around 2 3 bars fan speed (automatically set by the climate control).

If it blows harder than that, your AC is working too hard. When it gets too hot for you, click down one lower on the temp buttons. I usually start at around 28C(82F) at the start and seldom clicked down to 26C(78F) by the time I get home 45 minutes later. And we've been hitting 90F degrees here last week.

 

While you were only intermittently "inching" in Texas in June in the daytime, with air conditioning, you may have been spending more power on air conditioning than on forward motion. The only solution to that is to keep the temperature setting as high as you can bear, or turn AC off. The fan alone at lower settings consumes relatively little.
Yes, energy to the drive motor is cut off when you're stopped with your foot on the brake, so that condition uses very little more power than being stopped in PARK (the difference being the brake lights). When you take your foot off the brake in "D", some power goes to the motor to provide "creep."
Neutral won't help much, and could cause a problem, because in neutral the engine can't restart to recharge the battery when needed. (It might help slightly if you're intermittently inching downhill, and are careful not to overuse it.)

 

this is where a fully loaded pip comes into play.

 

Whether or not the engine starts to recharge the battery while you're stopped makes little difference in the end. Either way, sooner or later the lost energy will have to be replaced.

 

they put a/c in the cars for the purpose of keeping you cool... so burn a little gas... who cares! You're still going to get great mileage.