This is best, get up to speed and use EV mode to maintain speed. I always drive trying to conserve the HVB charge as much as I can as it takes fuel to recharge unless you have down hill grades to recharge, regen braking also works great down hills. I know other drivers say "look at that old man riding his brakes". I also use gas if I need to increase speed and save the HVB for maintaining speed. On the 2010 Fusion hybrid it took a lot more attention to keep the HVB charged than on the C-Max. The C-Max's Lith-Ion battery holds the charges and charges much better than the Fusion. All this sounds like I am a "hypermiler" but I don't consider myself one. I try to go with the flow of traffic. I have some recent pictures of my fuel miliage in the thread on 60 mpg