Ok, car acting really weird now. Been going 40mph a bit and today I decided to go 40mph the whole time where possible, more back roads, avoiding the express way and such. To town it was things as normal, hybrid mode and cruise down the road. I ran to get a fill up and the car didn't go into the hybrid mode where it shows charge and discharge cycling back and forth It dropped my mpg to like 50mpg indicated at 40mph while charging. Once the battery hit about 74% it kept the engine running but idled it down to about 1200 rpm (was 1280rpm) and it drove about a mile like that, then it killed the engine for another little bit before it went back to charging. Trip home from the gas station it did the same thing. In car screen said 66.7mpg which seems to be a massive jump up, like a lot more than just areo drag difference.
I'd think if it's going to use the battery, wouldn't engine off EV mode be better? I could force it to do that, but I figured I'd let it do it's thing.
Fill up was done at a different gas station, was pretty low on gas this time, 12.5% filled to 97.5%. It seems like I got a bit more gas in it this time than before, or the slower driving hasn't helped mpg hardly at all, which I really doubt. Screen indicated 52.7mpg
Trip home going 40mph the whole way with the strange charge/discharge cycle going on it showed 66.7mpg since I reset it at the gas station.
Now for the bad news, the scan gauge is really acting up lately. The average has been going to 2808 quite often, mainly when I scan through the gauges, like to look at the gas level. Not sure what's going on, or how to clear the memory out since there's clearly corrupt memory (hopefully not the flash memory for the firmware).
I've sent in a support question to scangauge, hopefully they know the issue, maybe it can be reset and be self corrected. If I don't go through the gauges, it seems to work fine. The fuel it said I used was pretty much spot on. Figured I'd reset it at the gas station since it's been messing up some so didn't do any calibration.
Anyway, the 66mpg is the highest I've had for a trip so far and the key was 40mph instead of 45mph which normally gives around 50-55mpg depending how far I go. About +17% better mpg for going about 12% slower is pretty crazy. I'm not sure if it's the coding in the car for how it functions at the lower speeds or what. I don't think the areo would have that large of an effect. I mean, going 45mph vs 55mph I'm seeing 50-55mpg vs around 46mpg. Something is at work here, but not 100% sure what. I think at the slower speeds, I'm probably getting closer to what the speed vs mpg chart says. I guess I should see how my numbers compares to the graph for the different speeds so far.
40mph - 66mpg vs 85mpg on the chart (77.7% of chart)
45mph - 50-55mpg vs 72mpg (76.4%)
55mph - ~46mpg (up to 50mpg for a very long trip) vs 64mpg (71.9%)
I guess the numbers seem to line up, I guess I just underestimate how much the cold start uses, or my coasting isn't done the greatest. Pretty interesting that the trend is slower I go, the closer to what the chart says I get. I think that would suggest part of the problem is areo.
Also I had the car fully warmed up, and it didn't want to kill the engine for a coast again, so I hit the EV mode button, it just beeped at me and didn't kill the engine. Not sure why it's being goofy like that.
Anyway, I've been trying to push this car to it's limits on mpg to really learn where my mistakes are and such. I still have a hard time beating 25mpg for the first 5 mins of a cold start trip.
Note that on the pic above, it's a warm start at the gas station but I idled for about a minute resetting the gauges and such, not used to the car yet and almost forgot to reset the trip. It was in the charge mode and the last bar is where it was in discharge mode but kept the engine on. It seemed like I had it in hybrid mode before going around 40mph (maybe it was closer to 45) and I was seeing pretty consistent 65-70mpg on the screen.
Anyway, tips on this new mode I stumbled into would be great, I don't think I've seen it before. If the programming is really this much better for the lower speeds, I really thing getting the gear ratio so this logic can work at 45mpg should give solid gains then at those speeds.
Seems like I'm always learning something new with this car lol.