Using EV switch to improve mileage

It's been about one month since I've installed my EV switch on my Prius and now I'm starting to really master it's use. I'm convinced that the EV switch when carefully used can help improve mileage on local drives where you need to make many stops to do errands. I used to restrict the use of my EV switch to just moving in the parking lot at the beginning and end of a drive, but now I'm starting to use it in the middle of my drives.

Here's a classic scenario. I drive my Prius for several miles to get some cash at the ATM machine. My engine is warmed up so I can park my car in electric. I park get out and wak into the ATM machine area and get my cash. I now need to drive about 1/4 mile to pick up some food. Without the EV switch I will get penalized with a few seconds of mandatory gas engine warmup even though my engine is already warm. So I start my car with EV switch and drive up to the point where I need to merge with 40 mph traffic. Now I could attempt to drive all the way to the food place all on electric, but that would definitely drain my battery. My goal is not to get 99.9 mpg on the way to the food place but rather to use the EV switch to help offset the penalty I am going to have to pay for this mandatory gas engine warm up.

So this is what I do. I merge into the 40 mph traffic accelerating in EV mode moderately picking speed up to about 20 mph, then I pulse the accelerator to trigger the EV rejection process and suddenly my gas engine kicks into warm up mode. But now since the Prius is already moving, I see my 99.9 mpg dip to about 25 to 35 mpg instead of the 0 to 7 mpg if I were to let my engine start up from a stand still. The general rule of thumb I'm finding is that to get great gas mileage avoid letting you're instantaneous mileage from ever dipping below 10 mpg. When you start from a stand still a few seconds of single digit gas mileage makes a big dent into a long run of fantastic 99.9 mpg runs.

I then just drive normally getting the same mileage I would have gotten if I never had stopped to get cash, I don't pay the warm up penalty and my battery doesn't get drained. By the time I traveled that 1/4 mile my gas engine is warmed up and I can coast into the parking space in electric mode.

 

I used to try the pull the stalk technique but it's hard to hold for 2 seconds while accelerating. Actually, I think when you accelerate the EV switch requests get ignored. So here's the thing. If I'm about to merge into faster moving traffic, I could pull the stalk and have my gas engine start before accelerating. But if I do that then I'll dip into the single digit mileage during acceleration. But if I just go ahead and accelerate while in EV mode, I can pulse the acclerator and instantly disengage EV mode faster than with stalk and while accelerating. By pulse I'm doing just what you describe, press down to demand hard acceleration but immediately lift off the accelerator to avoid the high rpms and then reapply gradual acceleration.