Is this car right for my driving habits/lifestyle?

Hello
I live in rural Vermont USA. I live two miles up a steep winding mountain. My driving habits are as follows:
Most days I drive 18 miles RT two mountains over. The roads are steep, mostly paved, and speed is usually 30-50mph depending on the road. The purpose of that drive is a daily hike with the dogs- so the mileage is completed in the span of 2 hours or so. If I'm reading everything correctly- this trip will largely be on the battery, and it will need to recharge after this. So, going for a hike in the morning then going to a Drs appt or such, would require a recharge?
About twice a week, I drive about 40 miles on the highway, then access roads that are long. Speeds on the access roads are usually 50 -60mph. There is some "city driving" by VT standards, during these trips. Looking at charging stations in the area- I might be able to combine a grocery run with charging- otherwise the time factor in charging isn't meshing with my activities.

I make some trips into town- about 4 miles- one stop light. And occasionally travel around the state either via interstate or mountain roads.

Any insight would be helpful thank you.

It sounds like the car should suit you pretty well. The 18 mile runs you should be able to do on battery, or mostly battery provided you are gentle with the right foot, although in winter you might find more motor action due to ambient temperature. My regular drive has a 2 mile hill climb at close to 10% grade, and as long as I manage the accelerator I can climb this at 50mph without the motor cutting in. If you then did a drive in the afternoon you would need to a recharge. The longer drives will obviously require use of the motor, but you can use Save mode for the high speed sections and the battery for the city parts.

My driving patterns are pretty similar to yours, mostly EV only during the week, and frequent longer drives at the weekend with the odd longer road trip. 14K miles on the clock and current lifetime average of 67MPG

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it. So even at the higher speeds of your mountain driving you're still using the battery mostly? I guess because I'm rarely going below 50 on our main roads, I was concerned I'd still mostly be using gas and the gas fuel rating is 25 mpg which is worse than my CRV.

rjoyvt said:

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it. So even at the higher speeds of your mountain driving you're still using the battery mostly? I guess because I'm rarely going below 50 on our main roads, I was concerned I'd still mostly be using gas and the gas fuel rating is 25 mpg which is worse than my CRV.

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But also think about DoD and how to take care of the drive-battery long-term, see STS134's explanation in this thread: http://www.myoutlanderphev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3738&start=30

He references this: http://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

In short, the fixation to drive primarily on battery power can significantly impact a phev's battery longevity much more than bev's due to DoD.

rjoyvt said:

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it. So even at the higher speeds of your mountain driving you're still using the battery mostly? I guess because I'm rarely going below 50 on our main roads, I was concerned I'd still mostly be using gas and the gas fuel rating is 25 mpg which is worse than my CRV.

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My round trip commute when I drive is around 30 miles, of which 27 would be 50mph or greater speed roads. There also almost 1500ft of climbing in that trip. As long as I am sensible with the right foot, and I have enough battery charge, there isn't any section of road where I can't run EV.

Woodman411 said:

But also think about DoD and how to take care of the drive-battery long-term, see STS134's explanation in this thread: http://www.myoutlanderphev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3738&start=30

He references this: http://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

In short, the fixation to drive primarily on battery power can significantly impact a phev's battery longevity much more than bev's due to DoD.

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STS134 is probably right from a purely economic perspective, in that it probably costs more over the long term using the battery heavily rather managing it to some extent. Then again if economics is your sole focus, then probably you wouldn't buy a PHEV in the first place! My personal take is I've spent my coin on a car than can run on EV, therefore I'm going to try my damndest to run it on EV as much as possible! I'm also hoping that with battery tech improving and new EVs hitting the market, in 8-10 years time when I will have to either think about flipping the car or replacing the battery, there will hopefully be aftermarket options available that will be both cheaper and have greater range than the current PHEV battery pack. That might just be wishful thinking.

Thank you both. I think I'm beginning to better understand the science and practical driving better. I'm not fixated so much on just driving on the battery. In my life I need an SUV and AWD and studded snow tires. If I can get better gas mileage with an electric hybrid (the tax benefit makes this more affordable to me than say a hybrid RAV 4) then I'd like to. But if my fast rural mountain driving is going to make this vehicle use gas- then I'm not going to be saving much gas mileage.

rangersac seems to drive like I do, and it sounds like you might be doing better than you would've with other AWD SUVs? Day to day- leave out the 10 years down the road?

Does the car come with a trip mpg counter? It's an hour drive to the dealership, in a part of the state I'm not familiar with, but is rural like where I am. I can map out a test drive that mimics my real life.

Yes, the car has a trip mpg computer.

rjoyvt said:

rangersac seems to drive like I do, and it sounds like you might be doing better than you would've with other AWD SUVs? Day to day- leave out the 10 years down the road?

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The honest answer is I've never owned another AWD SUV so I can't answer that question. My reasons for picking the PHEV were that we needed a larger car for the family than the compact station wagon we had, we wanted an EV to take advantage of solar generation on the house during the day, the range of the PHEV was enough to cover at least 90% of our day to day driving on EV, and it was the only EV on the market that could tow a decent load, unless I spent twice as much on a Volvo or Lexus Hybrid which was out of the question.

My real life experience in fuel consumption is that when you do have to use the motor it's pretty good for a decent sized SUV with a fair bit of boot real estate. By way of example I did a 151 mile drive at mostly highway speeds last weekend where I started with a completely drained battery. Four occupants and a load of gear and the trip computer gave 36.75MPG at the end of it.

rjoyvt said:

I live in rural Vermont USA. I live two miles up a steep winding mountain.

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Hi rjoyvt,

if you start your daily commute from home with a full battery, all the braking load for the first 2 miles descent will be on the brake pads and nothing on the ICE.
Why that? This car is designed for recovering the energy from a descent by storing it in the battery. This is simply not possible, as long as the battery is full.

Is it a problem? I never heard about and assume that the brake system is designed with a high reserve capacity.
Nevertheless, I would dislike it...

How to overcome this best? You simply can program the charging timer to stop loading after a certain number of hours.
After one week or so, you should have a good understanding what time will be appropriate for you and set the charging time accordingly.

BR, Harald

Thank you, that's an interesting consideration.