Hybrids and Plug-ins and EV's, oh my!

[Deathy G1]

I just traded in a fun but very inefficient SUV for a hybrid sedan last week due to my job requiring me to be onsite more, necessitating a crazy amount of gas consumption for my daily commute. The good news is that I went from getting 28 MPG to 51 MPG on a 52 mile commute. The bad news is that I'm annoying everyone on the road by driving like a grandma in order to meet the EPA estimate of 55 MPG combined for my vehicle (I haven't got there yet, but there are lots of hills on my drive and its no longer summer, where batteries thrive best).

I did a fair bit of homework before deciding on my 2023 Hyundai Elantra Hybrid Blue (went for the base version due to higher mileage), and ruled out Plug-in hybrids due to my commute being too long and full EVs due to size and range (they would be a drag on our bimonthly 600 mile trips up to Maine). I probably should have made this post earlier to ask if anyone can vouch for or against my conclusions on other powertrain types. but I digress.

That being said, can anyone offer any advice on driving a hybrid without making the whole highway swear vengeance upon you? I'm also curious about experiences with EVs and Plug-ins, just for consideration 7 years from now.

 

[Dekafox]

Steady speeds are your best friend. It's not so much driving at any one speed, but when you keep a consistent speed without having to really accelerate or decelerate it'll just sip the battery... though hills will throw that off. Not much you can do about that. Also IMO it's unavoidable in general, but if you don't need to, don't slam the accelerator to get up to speed. Once you've driven it a bit you'll start to learn the sound of when you're really pushing the engine and get a feel for where to back off.

I'm a bit over 5 years on my Prius now, and in general I don't drive it too different I feel than I drove my car before it, other than the above. I can get up near 70mpg in the summer, but winter totally kills it - like somewhere in the 40s. I'm sure part of it also is the engine helping with the heater in the cold. If it's like mine, there should be some sort of display available that shows the power drain if you really want to play games to maximize that - like how much it's pulling from the battery and when it actually needs the engine, or how much you're getting back from braking. I usually don't though and still get those numbers, so I'd also still say don't worry about it too much either, and just aim for a steady speed at whatever speed the rest of the road is going.

I looked at plugins back when I got mine too but we don't have any real infrastructure for it here. I have heard there are plug-ins starting to come out now that have an emergency gas tank as well, though I haven't looked into it myself, so hopefully by the time we've driven our cars into the ground these will be more regularly a thing.

 

[Deathy G1]

I looked at plugins back when I got mine too but we don't have any real infrastructure for it here. I have heard there are plug-ins starting to come out now that have an emergency gas tank as well, though I haven't looked into it myself, so hopefully by the time we've driven our cars into the ground these will be more regularly a thing.

I actually meant the type with a backup gas engine when I referred to plug-ins.

I'm trying similar driving techniques to what you have described. I'll have to take a look at that power screen and see if it helps me understand things better. I usually hide it so I can display CarPlay on the screen.

 

[DefaultOption]

When my wife had a Prius, we just drove it like a regular car. We never made much effort to eke out extra ms per g, we just operated under the theory that the high 40s - low 50s we were getting was markedly better than the ~30s that we would have gotten with a similar ICE car.

 

[wonko the sane?]

We switched to a hybrid rav 4 two years ago, and without changing our driving habits basically at all: we cut fuel costs in more than half easily. We were putting 100 bucks a week (roughly.) into our old dodge caravan, and now we put less than hundred bucks about once a month.

 

[Dake]

Congrats on your new ride.

If you want to be a true hyper-miler (they have their own FB groups and websites - I'm sure you could even find a page dedicated to your specific model), there is no way not to annoy everyone on the road behind you.

1. The basic things to remember are drag increases exponentially with speed, so your top speed is most likely going to be somewhere down in the fifties at the highest unless you have fairly long and/or steep hills. According to teh internets, your Hyundai has a drag coefficient of .28, so it's not quite as slippery as the best Prius at .25 or even the current one at .27. The Hyundai Ioniq, Tesla and a few other cars are down closer to .2 CoD, so they can go a bit faster without sacrificing economy.
2. With respect to Dekafox above, it's not about consistent speed at all, it's about energy management, letting gravity work for you and doing everything possible to prevent the gas engine from coming on. So if you have hills, you ideally crest a hill and give it only enough accelerator to increase your speed on the down hill side that keeps you running on the battery alone (no engine kick-on). Then as you start up the next hill, foot off the accelerator and you allow it to coast down for as long as possible - hopefully only forcing the engine to turn on to get you over the top. Or, if you know you can't coast most of the way up the uphill side, use the gas engine going down hill to get your speed up further (since it takes less energy on the way down), so you can coast further uphill. Then you do it all again. (This is why everyone hates a hypermiler on the morning commute - your speed will easily vary by 30-40 mph).
3. Try not to ever stop - it takes more energy to get you started from a standstill than if you're still rolling at even a couple miles an hour. This means attempting to time stoplights by... you guessed it coasting down as slow as you need to in order to avoid coming to a stop (reason no. 2 everyone hates hypermilers).
4. When you do stop, pull away as slowly as possible, modulating your accelerator pressure to stay on the battery as long as you can.

Personally, I think it's a terrible way to live and only makes driving more tedious - but some folks get a kick out of it. Just please, please for the love of Gob stay in the right lane. Saving a tenth of a gallon of dino-juice doesn't mean holding up a line of traffic while you attempt to efficiently pass some even slower person!

Now to just make the most of the technology while still actually getting where you're going is much simpler. It still involves trying to time lights and slower starts from a stop (just not sluggish). Keeping your highway speeds on the low-side of safe (and staying in the right lane mostly), and taking advantage of downhill runs to have your foot off of or only lightly on the accelerator as much as possible. Basically everything above but in a more realistic and safe manner that keeps you with the flow of traffic.

We bought my wife a RAV4 Hybrid a couple years ago and it gets better mileage than her old Yaris - a small car designed to get great mileage. And we manage it while still driving mostly normally.