84 mpg with cruise control

welcome to priuschat! sounds really interesting, post some pics with scenery if you can, all the best!

 

Very, very good numbers. We also have the 17" rims, and even without AC on are nowhere close to that. I agree the cruise can yield good numbers.

Slight niggle: are your numbers calculated or what the car's saying. Either way good numbers!

 

Those ARE very good numbers - however, I still maintain that one can get better mileage with an "educated" foot on the gas pedal and using "pulse and glide" (where applicable) than using the CC. I say this especially if you have hills of any size to contend with. IF we are talking "flat" roads, then I might lean towards the CC.

 

Welcome to the club!

I did a driving stunt last summer that made extensive use of cruise control:
Efficient driving for a 1,000 mile tank | PriusChat

• 2.56 L/100km
• 35 km/h
• 1601 km
• 41.26 L
• ~3 weeks

My only caution is charging NiMH batteries heats them. So I recommend using "B" when descending tall hills, 100 m, at high speeds to reduce the rate of heating. Also, take care to keep the cooling vents on the side of the rear seat clear and try to keep the traction battery as cool as practical. For example, park in a shady spot and walk a little further than close and solar heat the interior.

GOOD LUCK!
Bob Wilson

 

^ Getting excited about good mpg is half the battle.

 

The decline saved about 1.17 kWh of fuel (m*h*g/0.36 in joules)

Your 60 km run consumed 2.8*0.60 = 1.68 liters
A liter of fuel contain about 8.8 kWh of energy (33.4 kWh/US gallon / 3.8 Litres/gallon )
So the trip used 1.68*8.8 = 14.784 kwh

On flat land consumption would have been 14.784 + 1.17 = 15.954 kWh
(15.96/14.78)*2.8 = 3.02 litres/100 km on flat land

You had some help from wind. 3.4 L/100km is about expected

 

Oh, did we mention Prius people also speak 'metric.' <GRINS>

Bob Wilson

 

Amen.

I can tolerate American for simple units like speed or weight, but I have to use metric for calculations or I make mistakes and find the units way too frustrating.

 

Metric can be maddening too, when all your components are imperial measure. Engineering projects for example (my personal nemesis). Or jus just trying to price compare supermarket products with translated to metric measure.

 

Leave it to the Brits to make even metric difficult
They should have learned their lesson after losing leadership in Maths & Sciences due to Newton's stubborn refusal to accept Leibniz' superior notation, but Noooooo

 

Getting further and further off topic, but:

I wish nothing but bad things to whomever it was that initially decided that there would be (approximately) 25.4 millimeters in an inch. It only added insult to injury when they revised it to be exactly 25.4...

Up here they sometimes give missing persons reports in metric. Those people mostly stay missing I think. And I recall a news report some years back (wildly paraphrasing, but something like this):

"A man drove into the 1245000 centimeter diameter by 1435000 centimeter deep water-filled sinkhole. By the time he was pulled out his core temperature had dropped to 28.5 centigrade."

I had no clue if this was a significant event, lol.

 

Don't worry about off-topic. We have at least ~ 8 hours until OP reaches Athens

 

So you're suggesting that when I go down a hill for 100m/110 yds or more at 105 kph/65 mph, I should use "B" mode to minimize heating the batteries too much via regen during our trip to Yellowstone and Glacier. I have 2 such sections between Phoenix and Flagstaff and I'm sure there will be more in Colorado. Does this apply when gong slower? Here I'm thinking of going slower through the curves on the Beartooth Highway from Red Lodge to Cooke City MT.

 

I'm pretty sure he means

• 100+ meters of drop
• riding the brakes down
• the speed variable can be read as "max regen."

You can parse the advice as "try to avoid going from 2 bars to 8 bars on the battery meter in under a minute"