MSmith1915 Posted December 16, 2012 Report Share Posted December 16, 2012 The other day I decided to charge the high voltage battery to 100% (with the ICE). Once it reached all the way to the top of the battery indicator, I then decided to try and keep the charge in the upper half of the indicator. I drove a trip segment of 7.2 miles and the average mpg was 53.6, 3.2 EV miles, and .9 Regen miles. I would probably not recommend this on a regular basis because of the attention required to my Empower display. As the charge approached 90%+, the EV mode wants to kick in and assist the ICE. What you will see is the ICE will be running and the battery will show a discharge. To get the battery to finish charging, you have to really throttle back on the gas pedal and get it as close to the EV threshold without actually engaging the electric motor until you see an arrow above the battery indicator . Very delicate work on the foot and gas pedal, not a lot of room to maneuver. Once I reached about 100%, I would let the car go into the EV mode until I was close to the half-way point on the battery and then force the ICE to start up again. I had some stop and go's along the way and I always accelerated with the ICE, a smooth and gentle acceleration, giving the battery a chance to charge. My finishing charge was very nearly the same as the starting charge which was about 95%. As you can imagine, if I had let the electric motor run toward the end of the trip segment, the mpg probably would have been way up over 60+. Again, this took a lot of attention to the Empower display and you really have to keep an eye out for traffic in front of you. (I'll post some pictures when the forum fixes the picture upload). As a side note, when the battery was approaching 100%, the mpg would increase up to about 45-47mpg at 45mph and then decrease to about 20 mpg when the battery was in a full charging mode at a steady state speed. I am kind of surprised at how much drag the charging system puts on the engine. But, from my experience, the battery seems to charge faster than it depletes (city driving) so I guess this is to be expected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stranger267 Posted December 16, 2012 Report Share Posted December 16, 2012 (edited) I guess, how system works:- ICU has _best economy mode_- if battery is approx 50% charged, then computer try to keep ICU on this mode, or shut it down. So * it runs in BEST ECONOMY, if it provides too much power, it charge the battery; if not enough power, it tru to use battery (add EV power) a little before adding power to ICU * if it charge battery more then something and it still dont need much power, it kicks on EV-only mode and stops ICU for some time * and so on. So the best for economy is to have battery half charged if no big hills around. Else computer runs ICU in less-power mode (less economical) or more-power mode (less economical too). Other story is that system has some troubles when you has battery 100% charged (it happens on downhills often) and you want to combile engine-breaking (downhill) and small uphills... I feel some rawghness few times when car run in such configuration (fortunately, it disappear quickly once battery is discharged a little). Edited December 16, 2012 by stranger267 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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