Quote:
Originally Posted by MetroMPG
Cool mod, Eric.
What are your overall impressions? How have you changed your driving style to make use of the extra juice on board?
Any significant changes in fuel use?
Have you changed how you're monitoring energy efficiency (fuel + electricity use)?
Darin
(PS - hope you don't mind I moved this to the hybrids forum.)
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I'm still in a "testing" frame of mind and trying to figure out the best way to get the most of the system for my driving habits and routes.
I haven't had it installed for very long to get some real hard data. Mostly anecdotal at this point.
I've been lax about monitoring my fuel efficiency in the recent past because it had been dropping due to short trips and the occaisionally "hurry up I have to get there" trips which were killing my gas mileage. Also I drive a lot less miles so it takes so darn long between fill ups at times. I used to drive 300 miles a week, now sometimes I can go a week without even driving 150 miles.
I don't have a kill-a-watt, and my guess is I won't purchase one any time soon. (Maybe Santa will bring me one for Christmas?)
So given all this, I hope to still provide good information about the sytem.
I can tell you that driving in my small 2mi x 2mi town with only two stoplights in the whole town, that I can rely heavily on the battery power and easily break 100 mpg. The Enginer system slowly replenishes the amount of electricity used. Mostly though, I end up back home soon enough and I just plug in to refill.
On the highway, when I come to a slight rise, I can use MIMA to bring in light electrical assist from the stock battery pack. The Enginer system then can replenish the electicity used back into the stock pack. It replenishes at a much slower rate. I can continue this scenario until the Enginer system is used up.