The Secret to incredible range ( right here )

I am interested in the kwhrs, gallons and miles traveled to baseline the efficiency of your trips.

Then I can compare
My 231MPGe
And
49.6 MPG
metrics on a specific trip to the Prime metrics

 

Only in the same way that it includes e.g. going down hills.

 

so not the wall charge.

 

I apologize, I may have muddied the waters here...

The MPG reading is gallons of petrol consumed divided by miles traveled. While you are using battery to move the car the numerator will stay constant while the denominator will increase. The same would be true while coasting down a hill.

In my car the maximum MPG displayed is 199.9.

Example:
Let's say the car consumed one gallon over 90 miles in HV mode. The MPG would be 90 MPG.
Then you switch to EV and travel 10 more miles. The reported MPG will now be 100 MPG.

Working backwards to calculate petrol consumption:
Over 90 miles, 90 miles/90 mpg = one gallon
Over 100 miles, 100 miles/100 mpg = one gallon

 

thanks!
in the pip, even in hv mode, the car consumes a few miles of wall charge before going straight hv. have they corrected that?

 

During the ICE warm-up phase the car typically uses some battery energy to keep the ICE in a low load condition. I presume this is done to reduce emissions. After the ICE is warm the car burns a little extra petrol and returns the battery SoC to the value before the ICE warm-up phase.

So it is possible (for a little while, anyway) during a "pure" HV drive to consume a few percent of battery charge. This is why I report all my trips with THREE values:
Miles traveled
Battery SoC consumed
Gallons consumed (calculated by miles/MPG)

For any trip that consumed both NET battery energy and petrol I typically do not know how many miles I traveled by plug-in and how many by petrol, but I do know the amounts of petrol and battery SoC consumed. Since I know from other plug-in only trips how far I can travel on one full charge on level ground, I use that information for my estimate of plug-in miles and then calculate HV mpg.

Clear as mud ? I suspect I am complicating the explanation for what is actually a straightforward exercise.

 

Going to HV early in the Prime results in the car consuming a few miles of wall charge, then maintaining about an 80% charge (I'm guessing at the percentage - others may have a more precise answer).

I wouldn't call it *behavior that needs to be corrected* - I would call it lithium battery management, and making sure there is room for regen energy

 

Prime does not report MPGe, and I have no idea what it means in a Volt.

I really think you have to report:
Trip miles
kWh from the meter
Gallons of petrol

Your car might tell you kWh from the battery for a trip, or certainly beginning and end SoC. Either should be enough information to back calculate kWh from the meter. L1 charging has about 17% charging losses and L2 about 12% charging losses.

Of course the driver and conditions are not the same. If you just want to compare Volt Vs Prime, look up the EPA values for CS and CD in the form of MPG and MPGe. The mpg is HV mode and MPGe is plug-in ("EV") mode.



For the 2018 model years, the Prime is 54/42 = 28.5% more efficient in HV ("petrol") mode
And 133/106 = 25.3% more efficient in plug-in ("battery") mode
Both are combined highway/city values

.... And now, back to OP's topic. If you want to compare the two cars some more, please start a new thread.

 

that's what my pip does. because of that, i have no way to calculate mpg's unless i start with no wall charge.

 

Just note the start and end SoC

 

how do i work that into the calculation?

 

Example:

You drove 11.5 miles,
Used 10% SoC
Displayed trip mpg is 60, so gallons consumed are 11.5/60 = 0.1917 Gallons

Let's say you know that your typical range from the use of full charge is 15 miles. Then 10% SoC use is 1.5 miles
HV miles are then 11.5 - 1.5 = 10
And HV mpg is 10/0.1917 = 52.17

This calc has an underlying assumption of level ground driving. Which is fine, since it is not very interesting to wonder about a drive that e.g. is plug-in going up and ICE going down ;-)

 

gotcha, thanks!

 

I guess it’s one thing 2013 plus Volts do correctly

The Volt is a fair to hot weather car, my EV portion is mostly 45mph or slower country roads with 6 miles of 60mph freeway,
the Volt is the easiest car I’ve ever owned to hypermile (but only electrically, difficult to hypermile gas side)

Gas use is mostly on 65mph freeway,
8 months of the year my electric metrics on that trip bounce from 68-73 EV miles and ice side 40-50 mpg which is mostly from temperature variations.

The Volt does engage the ICE to the wheels at higher speeds so it’s not pure series, also why the ICe can do poorly in the city but well at slightly higher speeds

 

Yes, This is what was confusing to me as well (what I mentioned in post # 4). What mode are you using There are three: "Normal Mode", "Power Mode" and "Eco Mode". You are using "Eco Mode" according to your post. You also have choices of "EV-HV" or "EV-Auto". That was the auto mode I was asking about when I asked about auto mode in my post. That lets the computer decide whether to use EV/HV/ICE. That's what I was also questioning as Salamander King pointed out: "You "said "if EV comes on, eliminate it". That means you are switching from EV mode to HV mode."?

 

I know those roads well. They are the same ones that I routinely get 140+ mpg on a 120 mile trip. Hypermileing is real easy in the ,Prime, with a 4000 foot drop in elevation. I once went 85 miles on 24 miles of electric range on those roads. It was almost all down hill.