As some of you may know, I've been experimenting with trying to figure out what the most FE way of getting the insight up to cruising speed. There's clearly 2 schools of thought: either use WOT and full assist, or go after the "no IMA" approach. I've always felt that the answer was some kind of hybrid (no pun intended) of the two, but still have not been able to provide objective evidence of this being the case.
So, over the last 2 weeks or so, I've be playing with a new acceleration technique, and personally, I think I've been pretty suscessful. During my commute, I've been averaging well over 80mpg round trip, including 10-20% slow rush hour driving and over 50% in cold weather (upper 40's to low 50s).
My technique is based on the following observations:
Background charging hurts steady state FE
A FULL SoC disables regenerative braking.
Background charging seems to turn off before regenerative braking does
True "no-IMA" driving results in either painfully slow acceleration, or requiring you to hold a gear past the up-shift light to limit IMA assist. Neither is too desireable in my opinion.
Based on this, my current technique is based around trying to keep you SoC "near full". Ideally, the range between a Full SoC and right before background charging kicks in. The idea here is to maximize your time with background charging off, and also maximizing your time of regenerative braking opportunities. The overall goal is to use regenerative braking to generate enough energy to never hit background charging, and using sparing assist to re-enable regenerative braking when it is shut off on you.
So, here's how I accelate from a stop:
1) 1st gear, as WOT as you can get *without using assist*. This may take a bit to get used to, because as the RPMs rise, the stock insight will allow much greater throttle inputs before assist kicks in. Once you're past 3000 rpm, you can apply significant throttle input without assist.
2) Always hold first gear past 3000rpm, usually shifting around 4k or so. What this does is minimize your time in 2nd gear, because the insight is always very assist-happy in second.
3) Always use WOT in second. Never use more than 2-3 seconds of assist, as that is to damaging to your SoC. The idea here is to get about 2000rpms worth of hard acceleration in second before you shift out.
4) Use best lean-burn acceleration techniques from here on out.
I've found that this technique feels very natural fairly quicky, provides very reasonable acceleration in most situations, and certainly seems to keep your SoC in that happy place of little to no BC and still having Regenerative Braking effects. I've personally seen a 5-7mpg increase once I started using this technique.
In any case, it would be cool if one of you hypermilers out there could try one tank with my technique here and post the results. That way it would be at least one step towards some objective confirmation to what i've been seeing.
So, over the last 2 weeks or so, I've be playing with a new acceleration technique, and personally, I think I've been pretty suscessful. During my commute, I've been averaging well over 80mpg round trip, including 10-20% slow rush hour driving and over 50% in cold weather (upper 40's to low 50s).
My technique is based on the following observations:
Background charging hurts steady state FE
A FULL SoC disables regenerative braking.
Background charging seems to turn off before regenerative braking does
True "no-IMA" driving results in either painfully slow acceleration, or requiring you to hold a gear past the up-shift light to limit IMA assist. Neither is too desireable in my opinion.
Based on this, my current technique is based around trying to keep you SoC "near full". Ideally, the range between a Full SoC and right before background charging kicks in. The idea here is to maximize your time with background charging off, and also maximizing your time of regenerative braking opportunities. The overall goal is to use regenerative braking to generate enough energy to never hit background charging, and using sparing assist to re-enable regenerative braking when it is shut off on you.
So, here's how I accelate from a stop:
1) 1st gear, as WOT as you can get *without using assist*. This may take a bit to get used to, because as the RPMs rise, the stock insight will allow much greater throttle inputs before assist kicks in. Once you're past 3000 rpm, you can apply significant throttle input without assist.
2) Always hold first gear past 3000rpm, usually shifting around 4k or so. What this does is minimize your time in 2nd gear, because the insight is always very assist-happy in second.
3) Always use WOT in second. Never use more than 2-3 seconds of assist, as that is to damaging to your SoC. The idea here is to get about 2000rpms worth of hard acceleration in second before you shift out.
4) Use best lean-burn acceleration techniques from here on out.
I've found that this technique feels very natural fairly quicky, provides very reasonable acceleration in most situations, and certainly seems to keep your SoC in that happy place of little to no BC and still having Regenerative Braking effects. I've personally seen a 5-7mpg increase once I started using this technique.
In any case, it would be cool if one of you hypermilers out there could try one tank with my technique here and post the results. That way it would be at least one step towards some objective confirmation to what i've been seeing.
