Gas mileage in HV mode

I think one reason you get such good HV mileage when there is still EV miles left in the battery is that the ICE doesn't have to charge the HV battery. On my liftback, the HV battery often gets low enough where the ICE comes on to keep the battery charged.

 

Right, the cars running on pure EV

 

At 13,900 miles on my new, blue, Prime (Advanced)... Typical drive = 330 miles. Purchased 05/17/2017.
I have habitually driven in EV mode until the grid charge is gone, then allowed the car's computer to control the rest of the way as it wants to (HV). I did do a little experimenting with alternating between CHG mode and EV mode, but the computer seems to do just as well in HV.
On my last trip, I started out as usual, but then decided to do the reverse: After a few miles, I punched in HV, maintained that until about 20 miles remained to my destination, and went EV until I reached home. Along the way, I almost emptied the fuel tank (11.1 gallon fill). BTW, the gasoline miles remaining read "---.--" for the last 70 miles or so. When I finally switched to EV (after about 300 miles), the MPG was nudging 70. This trip included a few stop lights, miles of hill climbing, more miles of hill descending, back roads, Interstate roads, city streets. When I reached home, the MPG reading was 74.8. The miles driven on this tankful totaled 855, including two 330-mile trips and almost 200 miles of local (EV) errands. I am moving from MD to NY, and will be doing much more local (EV) driving than long distance trips once the MD home is sold, so I expect that I will be dragging my current cumulative 92.39 MPG slowly up, well above 100 in the near future. I am very impressed by this car so far. It is quite underrated, in my opinion.

 

Great results.

 

Drove up to Maryland (from NC) to buy a silver/black '17 Prime Advance on Thursday. A long way, but the deal was worth it. Managed 62 mpg going home and that was without a charged EV battery.

 

Good show. Iv had my plus for almost a year now and I finally caught on to increasing my Mpg.
Started off in Cool, started down a 2000 foot drop in altitude and ended up at McClellen Park in N. Highlands. Default position is ev/eco I kept the car in eco (economy) , so the engine would come on when needed. I neglected to note the mpg, but it was certainly better than the return trip. To my amazement, the reading was still 32, my home charge. On the way home, I followed the same procedure, but about 16 miles from home I used only EV, still 32. Pulling into my yard I had gotten 138 mpg........UPHILL to 2000 feet. So remember to keep the car in eco and save ev for the way home. Unless you have a charger at work. The bottom line is MPG, so some $ must be spent, with mileage like that, who cares......Oh, I forgot, still had 5 miles of charge left.

 

I regularly commute into NYC from west NJ on a daily basis. This involves a 7 mile "slower" commute down a state highway at 45, a 35 mile high speed run and then a slower drive exiting route 280 and making my way through the Holland Tunnel into the financial district. All in all it's a 51 mile one-way trip. I typically start my run off in EV for those first 7 miles until I hit the highway and then switch into HV mode. When I exit 280 is switch back into EV mode for the slow trip into the city. I then do the opposite coming home (e.g. slow through the city/tunnel/jersey city until I hit the highway, HV and then back to EV to depletion on those final 7 miles).

That's a 102 mile round-trip each day and I typically average about 85 mpg out of the car combined with a full depletion of the traction battery (or as much as Toyota allows).

On my old gen 3 (2011) I would need to fill up every 3 1/2 trips into the city, averaging about 45 MPG out of the car which wasn't great. The prime is a significant improvement over the gen 3, at least in terms of my personal commute. I can typically get at least 6 round-trips into the city before I need to refuel.

 

Here's a copy'n'paste of something I posted on FaceBook only yesterday... referring to a trip I made only yesterday:

...a trip to-and-from Indy... 121.8 miles total (196 km)... a total of about 18 miles (29 km) in "pure" EV mode... the rest in hybrid mode... and the *car* "thinks" it consumed about 1.59 gallons of gas / 76.9 mpg... consumed about 6.0 liters / 3.06 l/100km.

*******

Several weeks ago, I did two "pure" hybrid-mode trips around town (in both cases, the car's est remaining EV range was about 10-15 miles... but I put the car in HYBRID mode before heading out. One trip of 21 miles involving three 10-minute stops... the other of 17 miles with 2 stops. The first one showed about 71.4 mpg (I can't remember exactly)... and the second one ended up at about 74.1 mpg....

 

The car is amazing