First Highway Trip Post-Update

[SnitGTS]

Hey all, just got back from a 955 mile trip to Canada and back and I wanted to share my results. 

 

First leg driving from northern New Jersey to a rest stop about 50 miles from the border.  We took a sections of Rt. 80, Rt. 380, and Rt. 81 through Pennsylvania & New York state that goes through the Appalachian 'hills' (sorry, they do not qualify as mountains!) and there is a whole lot of long uphill climbs that kill fuel economy.  I'm not sure what the total elevation change was, but it felt like a lot.  We needed to get to Niagara Falls by a certain time because we wanted to ride the Maid of the Mist so I probably averaged 71 mph for the trip and used Eco Cruise for the majority of the trip.  Also, used the air conditioning about half the time to keep the girlfriend happy.

 

 

This next leg is the last 50 miles of the drive in the US, what we drove in Canada, and about 35 miles back into the US to a rest stop.  We stopped at Niagara Falls for a couple days then drove up to Toronto for a couple more.  Really didn't do much driving at each location, so most of this is highway driving plus about two and a half hours of sitting at the border waiting to cross.  Both times I hit the border traffic with a full battery, ran it down to nothing both times and the car ran while I was sitting to charge the battery...

 

 

The last leg was from the rest stop home, and the hills that hurt me going to Canada helped me coming home, you can see how many more miles I drove in EV this time.  We weren't in a rush so I set the car on Eco Cruise at 67 mph and the air conditioning was on the whole time to keep the girlfriend happy.

 

 

I kept resetting trip 1 based on when I filled up, but I didn't reset whatever you call this trip.  As you can see, I averaged 43.1 mpg round trip.  

 

[SnitGTS]

Actually I have a question.  As I was driving home I was watching the instant MPG gauge and I noticed that when the battery was about 75% and charging I was getting better gas mileage then when it was discharging to assist the ICE.  Huh???  

 

I would think that the mileage would be worse as it was charging and better when it was assisting the ICE, but after watching it today I have no doubt that it was better when charging.  There was a few sections of road that I would describe as "level" and while the battery was high and charging I was getting 45-50 mpg on the instant MPG gauge and when it was discharging I was getting 40-45.  

 

Can someone please explain to me why I get better MPG when the battery is charging versus assisting?  It doesn't make sense to me at all...

 

Incidentally, there was a section of road that was slightly downhill and I was in high ICE and the instant MPG gauge hit 60 mpg!  It was momentary and the power requirement was low at the time but I couldn't believe it got that high! 

[ScubaDadMiami]

My C-MAX does the same thing as yours, SnitGTS. 

[viajero]

Instant mpg is highly variable and can be misleading.  A little bit of wind, acceleration, or slope change can make a big difference.

 

It's surprisingly hard to judge whether the road is really level.  This summer I had some time on some empty roads to pay more attention to the instruments.  Sometimes I'd see mileage that I thought was surprisingly high or low.  I have a GPS with barometric altimeter and sure enough, I was going uphill or downhill and didn't notice it.

 

Also, the slightest difference in how hard you're pushing the gas pedal can make a big difference in instantaneous mpg.  45 mph and decelerating ever so slightly will give a very different mpg than 45 mpg and accelerating ever so slightly.  It's hard to control precisely.

[SnitGTS]

Agreed and understood, but this was pretty consistent over a near 1000 mile trip.  I was in Eco-Cruise the majority of the time so pressing of the pedal did not affect my results.