optimising fuel economy

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greycatrugby

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Feb 11, 2020
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Hi all. We recently took delivery of our new PHEV ( dynamic). Having read the manual and some of the threads on here I would welcome some advice; we bought the PHEV because my wife has a long commute 2 or 3 times a week from near Bristol up to Oxford and we're using a lot of fuel in our other car. . Reading the threads it seems that the best thing to do from a minimising fuel usage point of view would be to drive in EV mode for the 8 or so country/hilly roads until we reach the motorway and then use the ICE for the motorway portion of the drive, then back to EV mode once we leave the motorway for the last 4 or 5 miles of urban driving. Is that right? and when on the motorway is the best fuel economy achieved by using series or parallel hybrid mode? sorry if its dumb question, bit of a newbie to hybrid vehicles!
 
greycatrugby said:
Hi all. We recently took delivery of our new PHEV ( dynamic). Having read the manual and some of the threads on here I would welcome some advice; we bought the PHEV because my wife has a long commute 2 or 3 times a week from near Bristol up to Oxford and we're using a lot of fuel in our other car. . Reading the threads it seems that the best thing to do from a minimising fuel usage point of view would be to drive in EV mode for the 8 or so country/hilly roads until we reach the motorway and then use the ICE for the motorway portion of the drive, then back to EV mode once we leave the motorway for the last 4 or 5 miles of urban driving. Is that right? and when on the motorway is the best fuel economy achieved by using series or parallel hybrid mode? sorry if its dumb question, bit of a newbie to hybrid vehicles!

The PHEV wouldn't have been my choice for a regular long journey, probably a diesel would have worked out cheaper overall.

I would do as you suggest to maximise the fuel economy. You can't decide whether to use series or parallel mode when on the motorway, the car decides for you based on speed and load.

The single biggest influence on fuel economy is the right foot - gentle acceleration and low top speeds will always be better.
 
thanks - agreed. We needed a 2nd car anyway and we're in the middle of nowhere so a 4x4 made sense. Was just hoping we could get somewhere near the high mpg numbers Mitsubishi publish - guess thats not realistic for long motorway drives. Anyway, appreciate you responding.
 
greycatrugby said:
thanks - agreed. We needed a 2nd car anyway and we're in the middle of nowhere so a 4x4 made sense. Was just hoping we could get somewhere near the high mpg numbers Mitsubishi publish - guess thats not realistic for long motorway drives. Anyway, appreciate you responding.

It depends on the speed of the long motorway drives.

Wind resistance goes up a lot as speed increases and fuel economy goes down.
 
the high mpg figures quoted are achievable (and more) if you do a lot of (sub)urban stuff, but as soon as you do a long motorway journey it's going to drop considerably to around diesel figures and the further the journey, the lower it will go. It's hard to get worse than 35mpg though, and if that's just occasionally I can live with it for the benefit of zero tailpipe emissions around town.
 
You're right about using EV on slower roads and Save (or Charge) on faster roads. Can your wife charge the other end? That would improve things. As mentioned, the PHEV chooses between parallel and series: typically it's series below 40mph and parallel above.

35mpg is typical for a long journey at an actual 70mph (73mph indicated). We did Yorkshre to Cornwall and back last month with the ACC set to 73 and we got 35mpg. If you/she can drive more slowly, you will see a significant improvement.
 
littlescrote said:
greycatrugby said:
Hi all. We recently took delivery of our new PHEV ( dynamic). Having read the manual and some of the threads on here I would welcome some advice; we bought the PHEV because my wife has a long commute 2 or 3 times a week from near Bristol up to Oxford and we're using a lot of fuel in our other car. . Reading the threads it seems that the best thing to do from a minimising fuel usage point of view would be to drive in EV mode for the 8 or so country/hilly roads until we reach the motorway and then use the ICE for the motorway portion of the drive, then back to EV mode once we leave the motorway for the last 4 or 5 miles of urban driving. Is that right? and when on the motorway is the best fuel economy achieved by using series or parallel hybrid mode? sorry if its dumb question, bit of a newbie to hybrid vehicles!

The PHEV wouldn't have been my choice for a regular long journey, probably a diesel would have worked out cheaper overall.

I would do as you suggest to maximise the fuel economy. You can't decide whether to use series or parallel mode when on the motorway, the car decides for you based on speed and load.

The single biggest influence on fuel economy is the right foot - gentle acceleration and low top speeds will always be better.
Economy is not all there is. The PHEV is IMO excellently suitable for long motorway runs for its smoothness and quietness. The only minor drawback is the relatively small fuel tank - but you have to stop every 2 1/2 hours anyway. The fuel bill is the price of comfort.
 
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