Noah Harbinger

I would certainly never reject more data, but I think the fact that the current tests include a broad set of speed/acceleration situations is more important to assessing the overall capability of a vehicle. So few people drive cross-country or cross state, or do so for any significant percentage of their total mileage, that open inter-city highway is just not that significant to determining the relative operating cost of a vehicle. Heck I would love a heat-map with speed on the X-axis, acceleration on the Y-axis, and fuel economy represented by the color. And I would love to have a web tool to compare that heatmap between two vehicles to see where each vehicle does better than the other. And I would love to record a trace of my driving to superimpose over that comparison heatmap, to get an idea for my own driving patterns and habits whether one car would be better than the other.

DRLs run only the headlights - no marker lights, tail lights, or instrument lights, which I'd guess adds 50-100 watts of load. 100 watts continuous demand is an extra full battery discharge for every 14 hours of driving. Then I think DRLs run the headlights at a lower power - if they ran at half power, that's another 50 watts of load with headlamps over DRLs.

My bluetooth pairing is working well, so my phone always stays in my backpack. But yes, the general lack of nooks and crannies can be inconvenient at times.

Wait, are you saying Ford's offical shop manual which you must pay loads of money for is still requiring SVG Viewer? Hyundai's free online shop manuals (my favorite thing about my last car, an Elantra, was that unexpected perq - kinda sad when the best thing about a car is help fixing it) used to use SVG Viewer but they moved away from that 2006-ish. (Of course my car was a 2001, so that didn't help me any - but I did manage to get it installed at least).

I wish Fuelly would show a trendline over time for all vehicles - it would be interesting to see if the effects of the update are noticable.

You can turn on the tachometer on the MyView screen to get a better idea of what it's doing. If it runs down the battery during the warm-up phase and feels it must regen quickly at the same time as you are accelerating to high speeds, I could imagine it running the ICE pretty high.

It seems to me that the whole point of the update is to use EV mode more to increase overall fuel economy. GIven that that energy has to come from somewhere, that means anyone looking at the instantaneous fuel economy should notice LOWER fuel economy during periods of ICE use (since it is both driving the car and charging the engine), but LONGER periods of EV-only use.

I would say it demonstrates a deference to industry interest groups, befitting a long-term trend of government putting business interests ahead of public benefit.

For example, if you test at 70MPH for 2 hours, you can optimize the drive ratio so that the engine operates at its exact optimal speed/load point. Sure, that would be great for open road cruising. But what about urban freeways: If you're not driving at 3AM, you're probably not going to be setting the cruise control for very long.

Mine is named after a fruit, what does that make me?

Also, testing at a single speed, ANY single speed, would be ludicrously easy to game, to tune a vehicle to perform extremely well on that test but perform poorly in real-world usage.

I'm sure +3 has already posted the link by now. I did a pivot table on the data and pretty much only Volkswagon, Toyota, and the luxury manufacturers are running a significant number of 5-cycle tests.

Maybe offer beer instead?

I would recommend imgur.com over photobucket but that's up to you.

I walked by a Prius V (which has, I believe, the same new electronic compressor) as it was starting up, and it was making the same noise. It may just be a drawback of these electronic compressors. On the other hand, when I turn on the car, with AC off, in silent start mode (no ICE), and have my foot on the brake, I'd swear I'm hearing the same thing, but a lot quieter. So I'm wondering if it's something to do with pumping coolant to the inverter? The brake booster is powered by the high-voltage battery as well, no?

There's no delusion quite like self-delusion! Time and time again, people are happier with things they pay more for, regardless of whether there is any benefit. Doesn't at all mean that's the case here, but… it's very hard to prove objectively.

While passing a truck with someone coming up from behind, I floored it (to make sure I'd stay out of the way of the coming vehicle) - the power almost scared me. It's the first time I'd pushed the pedal that far on flat land.

The big difference I see is that when you start your ICE-only vehicle, the ICE is the only thing powering the vehicle. When it comes on on a hybrid, it can share the load.

A few weeks ago, I drove down a long, steady downhill grade from 6000'. The battery filled up quickly, but the whole rest of the way, the little regen arrows kept spinning, and the ICE did not turn on except for the brief period when I turned on hill hold assist (I didn't like how fast the engine was spinning (4000RPM), so I went back to manually [pedially?] braking). I did not check to see how hot the brakes were, but I did not smell anything when I stopped on the way down. I turned the AC to "LO", just to feel like I was getting some benefit from all that potential energy - it was a hot day :) I was wondering if engine braking puts any exceptional strain on the engine?

It's probably a "bluetooth profile" thing.

A little trip through the mountains, on the way down - if I had timed the trip better (started after a big uphill segment at the beginning, and not stopped along the way down) I could have had 100+MPG at 30 miles, which would have been far more impressive…. alas. Next time I'll time it right. :)

It's more the humidity than the heat down there, right? In that case, running the AC at a higher temperature might be more comfortable than you'd think.

In my vast vast experience of 4 fill-ups, the gallons consumed reported by the tripmeter underreports consistently by 3-4%. I always fill up to the first click, and no more. Of course, I should try out more gas stations - 3 of those 4 fillups have been at the exact same pump. Maybe the station is just skimming a 3-4% profit on on their gas?

The big shiny green ones around here must be a different species - they only eat overripe fruit. My grandma had a grape arbor and they would only show up once the fruit skins started breaking on grapes that had been left out too long.

I am amazed they kept the Yen strong for as long as they did… every other country has had a weak currency policy for the last 10 years, it was undercutting their exports during a time when they were already trying to recover from their huge late-90s recession.