MPGs and You: A Non-BS Approach to Driving Green

[Widget]

So, I have to be honest - since buying my CR-Z, I haven't bought into the hype that achieving more than 32 MPG in a real-life setting was very realistic. After browsing here a bit and learning a bit more, I'm a little bit more inclined to believe this.
However, don't get me wrong. Don't expect to grab this car, have what I would consider "normal driving habits, and achieve super-high gas mileage. It takes a lot of concentration and a lot of watching the dials (which are infact there for a reason I found out! LOL).

So here's a few tips in a understandable manner (also, get ready to have some leg pains with this):

• There is a "sweet spot," as I read somewhere else (thanks to whoever you are, if you read this!) where you can literally hold the MPG gauge at 50mpg and sustain a constant speed. However, this isn't very realistic, because the road pretty much has to be absolutely flat (or downhill) to accomplish this. It still works like a charm though. You have to concentrate really hard and lightly push that gas pedal so the MPG meter is on the "dot" right on the 50mpg mark.
• Secondly - use the electric motor appropriately... Now that your knee is sore from holding this 50mpg spot, you're going to make it even more sore by, again, concentrating really hard to push the pedal down so the gas motor kicks in slightly. Be careful! Watch the electric motor gauge and allow it to bring it about 5-6 bars then STOP. If you concentrate hard, you will actually hear the gas motor kick in - but the car will pick up speed a lot faster than expected with 5-6 bars on the electric motor. This allows you to keep the MPGs at around 30 until you hit the crest of the hill you're getting over.
• Third tip (and last really) - DO NOT REMOVE YOUR FOOT FROM THE GAS PEDAL. I'm assuming this is because of the IMA attempting to charge the battery with an engine break-type mechanism, but you will lose precious MPHs by taking your foot off of the gas pedal, which will force you to use more MPGs to speed back up on the road and not drive like a granny.

Also: don't expect to go over 65-70 MPH while attempting to drive green. Not going to work very well.

Anyway, I hope this helps other people like me that are tired of reading: "HEY I GOT MY MPGS TO 47!" This just simply isn't possible in the real world (or maybe just in central Texas because we have no such thing as flat roads). Anyone claiming to get over 45-47 MPG are just bragging that they managed to find a super long downhill stretch and drove a whopping 50 MPH down it while pissing off everyone else possible on the road.


***THIS IS HIGHWAY DRIVING ONLY!***
Don't get me wrong, I'm not posting this picture to brag about hitting 45mpg - I had to work really hard to get this. Just showing you my results after doing the above three things. I typically only get 30-32 mpg city.

[Scotty001]

[TinTin]

My drive home from a small town outside of town. 70% highway 30% city.

Gliding down hills helps the most. I do it when i can.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ichii]

Use cruise control helps, I drive 63-65mpg and get 46-48mpg. There's plenty of hills where I commute

[GoHuskies]

If I've just filled up and go directly on the highway I'm still getting 43-45 MPG. I've also noticed going 75 MPH with higher speed bursts is also good for 40+ MPG as long as there is moderate traffic. On open highway fuel economy is lower. I suspect having other vehicles breaking up the air before you pass helps since technically our cars have a rather poor drag coefficient.

[Widget]

Originally Posted by Ichii

Use cruise control helps, I drive 63-65mpg and get 46-48mpg. There's plenty of hills where I commute

Yep, the hills make a huge difference and are a very subjective subject for this MPG discussion.
Maybe we have different hills here in Texas because of the morons who built our roads?

I literally have to drive uphill 95% of the time to get to work, and they are fairly steep hills because our DoT are a bunch of morons.

[wizkid057]

I agree and disagree with the OP. Generally mid to upper 40s+ MPG is not easily achievable in real world situations, but, its certainly not as difficult and tedious as its made out to be.

Upper 30s (38-39) and low 40s (40-41) are pretty easily achievable with this car if you just take it easy and not drive like a jack***. (Although, on my way home from work today I drove in Sport mode the entire way, about 15 miles, and I drove like an a**hole on the highway at 75-85 mph weaving and all and I still got 35 mpg on my Trip B reset before I left...)

As I previously posted along with a video its definitely possible to get 50+ MPG without much actual effort. Specifically, this entire trip I was using the cruise control and most of the time was sitting with my legs crossed.

If you watch the video, even though I don't have the cam on the road most of the time, you can see from the gauge that there are plenty of hills on my route. If anyone here is familiar with the northern 2/3rds of I-295 in NJ (from exit 26 all the way to the end around mile 67) then you'll know what I'm talking about. The highway goes over so many different roads, and the inclines/declines for some of these overpasses can be pretty steep. So, its certainly not flat terrain, yet I was able to put-put along and get 50 (51?) mpg on that trip.

Real world, non-highway driving I still get mid to low-40s just by driving conservatively. I don't gun it from stops, or stop abruptly. I'll gradually accelerate and let the IMA do it's job for as long as possible. I'll also decelerate as long as possible with regen going when I know I'm coming to a stop sign or a light thats red or about to be red.

Honestly, the lowest I've ever seen the MPG gauge over any real distance (>5 miles) was about 27 mpg. And that was in sport mode, driving in stop/go town traffic while in a hurry. Also had the A/C running.

Following just a few simple pointers you can significantly improve your MPG.
* Use ECON mode. It does what its supposed to.
* When possible and above 40 mph, use cruise control.
* When not possible to use cruise control (ie, city), just take it easy. You dont need to go zero to the speed-limit+5 instantly. Take it easy accelerating, take it easy decelerating.
* If when you come to a stop you noticeably settle back into your seat from the deceleration then you're stopping too fast. For example, when you're at like 10MPH it should still take 4+ seconds before you reach 0 MPH.
* Turn the A/C off.
* Add tire pressure.

A few "advanced" pointers would be things like:
* Keep the IMA battery as charged as possible via regen when possible. The higher the charge on the IMA battery, the less drag the parasitic charge causes while driving. That one bar of charge is actually a decent amount of lost power, roughly 1.5 HP. Might not sound like much, but it is.
* When decelerating, use only regen for deceleration as much as possible. Do so by either just letting off of the gas and regen that way, or very very slightly press the brake pedal just enough so that the charge gauge goes to full and no further. This wont be enough to engage the brake pads (waste of energy) but is enough to tell the ECU that you mean business when it comes to this whole deceleration thing.

A few things that, in my experience, are false pointers that people perpetuate either because they don't make any difference or have bad side effects:
* Keep your windows up: This technically should make a difference in mileage... but in my experience its negligible, if it makes a difference at all. I've gotten my best trip MPG (54 mpg over 96 miles) with both windows down...
* Turn off your radio/headlights/accessories/etc: This again, technically should make a difference... however it is once again pretty negligible. I'm not 100% sure the exact amount of power our HIDs use, but lets grossly over estimate here and say they use 500 watts (42 amps!). That would be 0.63 HP of energy needed to power them. While that figure is significant, consider that the power needed to run the headlights for 15 minutes (0.125 kWh) will be recovered by the IMA regen setup in less than 30 seconds of deceleration, taking into account some efficiency losses. So, yes, it should make a difference. No, its not enough to matter, especially with the CR-Z. (I also note that I had my headlights and fogs on along with my radio blasting in the entire video above.)
* Wax: Um... this is so negligible that its not a mileage changer at all.
* Keep a constant speed: Sometimes this is true. Perfect for perfectly flat long roads. But in reality, you want to slowly lose some speed while going up a hill and slowly gain it back going down the hill.
* Coast in neutral when possible: This is good, as it reduces drag when coasting. Problem with this is that you then lose your regen, which makes the IMA battery stay at a lower charge, which then eats more gas to charge it, etc etc. Only good to do this if your IMA battery is full or near full. I won't debate the potential wear and tear of this method (CVT) but I'm sure it's not the intended function.
* Turn the engine off while coasting: Ok, sure. Save the few milliliters of gas that will be burned while the engine idles and you're coasting. While I'm sure this would be fine if you coasted a lot of long stretches of downhill driving, I definitely think the unintended wear and tear would outweigh the benefits in the long-term.


I could probably go on all day with this stuff. In any case, my point is, this car is pretty well designed. It will get good mileage in any conditions. Follow some simple pointers and you'll get even better mileage.

Here's a fun pic:


This is a trip from NJ to FL (highway, 75+ MPH), then driving all city driving for a week in Orlando for Disney, Universal, etc, etc (~120 miles), then from FL to central NC (hwy cruise at 79MPH the whole way), driving around NC for a few days (very hilly!), then from NC to NJ (hwy, major traffic through DC and Richmond, VA area).

Still managed 36.1 MPG over almost 2300 miles... which is pretty much right on with the EPA values considering the hwy/city ratio here. And I was driving pretty quick on the highways on the way down the FL and from NC to FL... like, way illegal quick.

Anyway, and all of that was without trying for MPG at all. Just getting in and driving.

Have fun.

[lexicon]

This is my normal commute to work - 65 (54 US) is probably the most I'm ever going to get, but I regularly see 61+ (the mpg graph max's at 61 so it's hard to know unless you reset the trip meter). This particular day I'd put fuel in at the start of the journey so the trip was reset anyway.
I don't do any 'hypermiling' stuff, coasting and such, or scrutinise the instruments for optimum conditions - I just drive what I consider to be sensibly, keep up with traffic and anticipate.
I don't drive efficiently all the time - I get frustrated, have bad days or just need to blow the cobwebs away like anyone else but I'm still averaging 54 (45 US) over 15000 miles without trying that hard.

[Widget]

Again, the intent of this guide was to help people who didn't believe in all of the hype of these pictures of 50+ mpgs of 40-60 mile trips.

Honestly, I think you're all full of crap when you say "I don't think about it when I drive," and you claim 50+ mpg.
Either that, or the city that you drive in is nothing like where I live, where going anything but the speed limit and doing anything but accelerating to the speed limit in a reasonable time frame will get you honked at or tailgated.

Maybe we're just aggressive drivers in Texas, thus nobody gets decent gas mileage.

[lexicon]

Originally Posted by Widget

the intent of this guide

Seems to be to dismiss the experiences of others as "crap" and "hype" because they don't fit with your own?