Can anyone give me some hypermiler hints for the Insight 2?

[Cassius]

Ah thanks for the details!

That and the article below are required reading for learning how to P&G in the Insight II.

Adapting Basic Hypermiling Techniques to the HCH-II - CleanMPG Forums

I'd love to be able to hack the paddle shifters to control the regen/glide/assist levels in EV. I guess I'll have to settle for a developing a foot with brain surgeon level precision.

[seffieandcoco]

Does anyone know how to shut the engine off for coasting without using the key switch? Has anyone tried an auxiliary switch? Coasting with the engine off lets me get an easy 65 MPG in local driving and 82 on the highway. I always worry the steering lock will kill me!!!!!!!!!

[buglermcd]

There are certain things I will not do for the sake of getting better FE. And turning off the engine while coasting is one of them.

My safety is worth a hell of a lot more than an extra dollar for every tank of gas.

If that steering locks up, and you can't turn out of the way of something on the highway before you can turn the engine back one, then you deserve a Darwin award.

Some things are not worth the reward for the risks you have to take.

[jraynor196]

Originally Posted by seffieandcoco

I always worry the steering lock will kill me!!!!!!!!!

...Or someone else and leave you living with the consequences.

I never understood the practice of turning the engine off, basically its a bad practice and gives efficient drivers a bad rap/rep.

I keep my engine on and in D the whole time, IMO it is the only way to go.

[GoMetricToday]

People keep talking that the I2 can run in EV? How? What things do I need to do to get it to do that? I live in North East Tennessee so I have plenty of hills to coast down to regen my IMA battery. I only live 2 km away from work and if I could somehow trick the car into EV then it would save me some gas. Not that I really need to. I can go a month on one tank. Or does EV just happen on its own?

Oh BTW I have just got my Flowers on the MID. YAY!!! I have just under 6500 km on my I2 since July 7th. Not too shabby. I was so tickled when I got my flowers. Such a lovely bunch of flowers they are.

[regeya]

I tried some of the pointers on this thread, and if I read the meter right, I got around 55 MPG on the morning commute. Thanks! I'll see if I can beat that in the days to come. YMMV.

Figured out the trick to going into EV mode, too. When I was going downhill (and I've repeated it) I let off the accelerator entirely then barely pushed it in. Viola, EV mode! I also accidentally managed to get the thing to go into pure-gasoline mode purely by accident using similar means (get it to go into gas + electric, then barely let off the accelerator)

EDIT: There's an info screen which shows if you're charging, discharging, running off gas, etc. You have to bring that up to know for sure if you're in EV mode. It's possible, but kinda pointless IMHO since you have to let the batteries recharge later anyway...

[arothman]

Any advice on whether to use Cruise Control or not? In theory, it would seem that Cruise would allow the car's computer to maximize MPG better than I could do manually, but I'm not sure.

My drive to work is about 1/3 4-lane road (35mph) and 3/4 freeway (60/65mph). It's slightly uphill on the way to the office and slightly downhill on the way home, with no real 'hills' except for the freeway ramps. There seems to be a pretty strong drag during regen, so I can't really coast that much without dropping below the posted limit.

[Cassius]

The short answer is if the CC makes the car use the battery or puts energy back into the battery you could do better with your foot. The optimal cruising method is to hold the throttle steady so it never changes once you've reached optimal cruising speed. So going up short hills you will deaccelerate and going down them you will accelerate. There's a fancy hypermiler name for this but I forget. The CC tries to keep your speed steady (although it does a really crappy job of it in the insight) so it guns it when you go up a hill turning angry purple and does heavy regen on the way back down.

[arothman]

Interesting. I rarely use CC when I'm not on the freeway, so that's no biggie. My freeway drive to work consists largely of long slopes up or down... not big enough hills do go into the blue, even when the assist is active, and not big enough to coast for some charge either. Seems like with or without cruise I'm pretty much steady at 2000rpm and barely any battery involvement. Not sure if that's good or bad, but it seems so far like I'm driving with the speedometer in 'green' all the time unless I'm getting on the freeway. I suppose that's the general idea?