Negotiating Hills

[JimHatton]

Hi All

I live on a hill about 90m above sea level. To get into the local town it's downhill all the way to sea level. Getting back home however is uphill all the way. I've tried several different ways of driving up the hill but to be honest, nothing seems to make a difference.

One problem is that the IMA battery runs down before I get up the hill. This means that instead of just pulling the car up the hill, the poor little engine has to recharge the IMA battery as well. There's a spot halfway up the hill where I can feel the power drop as the power meter drops into the charge zone.

I can't help thinking it would be better not to charge the IMA battery when the engine is already working hard, but perhaps there's a reason why the battery has to have a certain charge level. Is there a way I can delay or prevent the IMA battery being charged any particular time ?

If anyone has any ways of negotiating hills I can try, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks

[Eli]

If the hill is really that big, downshift. You will lose some fuel economy, but you won't be depleting your battery as heavily.

The IMA system should turn off the automatic background charge if the engine load is above a certain point.

It sounds like you could use the CalPod Clutch Switch mod, though. It's essentially a switch to open or close the clutch switch as you please. This has the effect of allowing you to control assist/regen.

[mct75]

Whenever I hit a hill that I won't be able to maintain ~55 MPG on, I just floor the gas and use full assist. On my commute, there's a hill that takes 3-4 SOC bars to get over, but I can regen on the way down and get 2 or 3 back. Ignore the downshift light until it gets to lugging bad.

[MN Driver]

Sounds like you could use a clutch switch, that is if you have a manual transmission and also assuming that you aren't making a mistake and posting this in the 1st gen thread. It seems your first post was in a 2010 thread where you said your charge meter flicked 'down'. Do you have a 2010, or what year is your car? If you have a 2nd gen you will likely have less control over what the car is doing since you can't change gear to modify engine load or use a clutch switch to prevent assist to avoid the regen or shut off the regen. If you have a manual transmission 1st gen, get a clutch switch, you will love it, single best tool you can use if you don't have MIMA.

[DBASRA99]

I live in the hills of West Virginia and I have the same problem. I never know if I should floor it and use assist as much as possible or just go as slow as possible. Is there any data out there on this topic?