Guys, thanks for the helpful hints. My long trip got delayed for a week, so yesterday I drove out there & back. For some of the steeper upgrades, it worked nicely to be in 3rd gear at 3K rpm .. it kept the electric assist mostly off.
Yesterday was a fantastic training opportunity. The traffic was pretty light, so I mostly had the right lane to myself. There was lots of rollercoastering on dips & climbs, and I got to learn all about, uhh, losing momentum gracefully while keeping the FCD at a fixed point, before finally being down in 4th or 3rd to climb the rest of the grade. There's sort of an art to feeling out the gas pedal pressure, when downshifting as you lose momentum, so that it lands on a setting that causes neither electric boost (thus depleting the battery faster) nor excessive loss of speed (causing momentarily high mpg's).
Yesterday's highway time made me much better on the local roads today. For a trip up to NH and back, I averaged over 70mpg for the segment.
I saw the discussion elsewhere about calculated mpg's vs FCD readings. According to the A trip segment, I did 69.06mpg yesterday, but according to the odometer and the amount required to fill-up afterwards (using the same pump at the same station and stopping when the auto-stop thing engages, of course) the trip yielded 66.83mpg ~ approx 3% difference.
Lmpg is finally above 57!! Somebody pinch me!
Yesterday was a fantastic training opportunity. The traffic was pretty light, so I mostly had the right lane to myself. There was lots of rollercoastering on dips & climbs, and I got to learn all about, uhh, losing momentum gracefully while keeping the FCD at a fixed point, before finally being down in 4th or 3rd to climb the rest of the grade. There's sort of an art to feeling out the gas pedal pressure, when downshifting as you lose momentum, so that it lands on a setting that causes neither electric boost (thus depleting the battery faster) nor excessive loss of speed (causing momentarily high mpg's).
Yesterday's highway time made me much better on the local roads today. For a trip up to NH and back, I averaged over 70mpg for the segment.
I saw the discussion elsewhere about calculated mpg's vs FCD readings. According to the A trip segment, I did 69.06mpg yesterday, but according to the odometer and the amount required to fill-up afterwards (using the same pump at the same station and stopping when the auto-stop thing engages, of course) the trip yielded 66.83mpg ~ approx 3% difference.
Lmpg is finally above 57!! Somebody pinch me!
