Guten Tag from Germany
 

Hello everyone,

my name is Tom and I'm living in the south of Germany. I live in a city, so I'm not a daily driver because most of the time it's easier and of course better to just use public transportation or commute by bicycle.

I think these world solar challenges and my fascination for EVs and Hybrid cars like the Insight and the Prius got me interested into the Hypermiling topic.

My actual car is a 2017 Honda Civic sedan with a CVT transmission. It’s a 1.5 liter turbo engine which is advertised with 31 mpg / 50 mpg / 41 mpg (city / outside city / combined) (7,5 / 4,7 / 5,7 liter per 100 km). This is officially measured by the standards of WLTP, which is the poor measurment, european car manufactures use.

My total mpg with this car is actually 36 mpg. But it’s slightly getting better. My last gas mpg on a full gas tank was 41. I’m rarely driving on country roads, which have the best potential to drive fuel efficent, unfortunately I have to drive in the city sometimes and most of the time on the Autobahn.

In terms of Hypermiling I'm using a bit of a high tire pressure, I absolutely try to avoid short trips, I’m driving at low rpms most of the time. And I'm also tracking my gas fillings with an site called Spritmonitor. I haven’t done any mods to my car but I’m planing on buying something like a clinometer or clinometer-app.

Wow that was a lot of text...:rolleyes:

Awesome that you can use transit and your bike so much.

Welcome!

Willkommen!


Did you chose the CVT on purpose over a manual?


One of my big pet peeves about regulated fuel economy testing is that it's biased against manual transmissions. These days, CVT ratings appear to exceed the fuel economy of the same car with a manual transmission, but a motivated eco-driver can still beat the CVT in the real world without much difficulty. (And have more fun while doing it!) I would assume the European test also handicaps the manual.


All that said, one of the things I love about CVT's is how much more civilized the highway driving experience is compared to most manuals. Cruising RPM is dramatically lower & more relaxed.

Short answer, yes I did.

Loooooong answer: I really love driving manual transmission but I have to go through some serious traffic cams, stop and go traffic and sometimes even if there is not much traffic, I just have to stop every 2000ft for a red light. So it was kind of unbearable for me, to press the clutch every few seconds. :D

After driving a 2012 Volkswagen Polo (little version of a Golf), which was kind of a lemon car, I don't wanted to have anything more to do with VW. And the reputation of their DSGs was pretty bad. So I decided to go for a Hyundai I30 Fastback, but they also had DSGs and I was too sceptical. I read about some total totaled automatic transmissions.

So I had a look on the Hondas and their CVT. I read a lot about it and made some test driving and it just felt great for me personaly. Although I know there are many car lovers who dislike continuous transmissions. :snail:


Yeah I know an eco motivated driver with MT will easily beat the CVT when it comes to fuel efficent driving.

I just went through the data and the MT will beat CVT, at least that's how it's rated with the 2017 Civic sedan:

NEDC numbers (liter per 100 km)
City......................7.0 (MT) / 7.5 (CVT)
Outside city...........4.6 (MT) / 4.7 (CVT)
Combined.............5.5 (MT) / 5.7 (CVT)

NEDC numbers, I transfered the numbers to MPG for you
City......................33 (MT) / 31 (CVT)
Outside city...........51 (MT) / 50 (CVT)
Combined.............43 (MT) / 41 (CVT)

WLTP data (liter per 100 km)
Combined.............5.9 (MT) / 6.4 (CVT)

WLTP data (MPG)
Combined.............39.9 (MT) / 36.7 (CVT)

Just to compare, here are the EPA data for the exact same car
City......................31 (MT) / 32 (CVT)
Highway................42 (MT) / 42 (CVT)
Combined..............35 (MT) / 36 (CVT)

I'm OK with L/100 km (Canada). But as you've probably seen, most people on here speak in MPG (US).

Interesting that the WLTP gives the advantage to the manual!

If I must drive an automatic, I really do prefer a CVT (for reasons of economy). The last one I drove was in a Mirage (Space Star in Germany), and I was genuinely surprised & pleased how it was designed & programmed to aggressively pursue good fuel economy.

Do you know if you can safely coast in neutral with yours? (No mechanical reason not to?) That's a technique that can help quite a bit in certain circumstances. We had a Mirage owner here with CVT who got very good numbers (significantly better than the EPA rating) and he did quite a bit of neutral coasting, where appropriate.

That's exactly the same with me, I really enjoy driving CVT.
And I remember how amazed I was, when I was the first time a passenger of a Toyota Prius in 2012. Everytime the driver floored it, the car went from zero to over 100kph wihtout and noticable gear changing. I absolutely did not understand what the hell was going on, how in earth can that car drive up to 100 kph or even more in the first gear....:D
I obviously never heard of CVT at that time.

The CVT of the Civic has noticeable gear changes. It feels a bit like a normal autmomatic transmission. I'm not a big fan of that, but car makers are programming the CVTs like that, because there are too many people who think continuous acceleration is something bad, I guess. :o



I don't know, I've read something about neutral coasting in a german Civic community a few weeks ago. There was one guy who was doing that to drive more fuel efficent. But that's a good advice, I'll read the manual and ask some other Honda CVT-drivers and then come back. :)

Oh! Then it probably also has a "manual mode", no? On the shifter or buttons/paddles on the steering wheel?

That's an opportunity to save a bit more fuel, by telling the computer to shift up to the next "gear" at the lowest possible road speed.

My aunt had an Audi with a CVT that behaved so much like a conventional automatic transmission that I had to look up the specs to confirm! Very convincing until you watch what happens in "top gear", which had a lot more RPM variability than the lower "gears".

Thread: "Short-shifting" a Jeep Patriot & Audi A4 CVT (forcing early "upshift") saves gas

I read through some discussions regarding the neutral coasting. Most people were convinced that it makes absolutely no sense to do that with such a modern CVT.


Regarding the manual mode: The car has D and S mode, you can intervene all the time with the paddle shifters. I use use the down shifter a lot for engine braking before corners of red lights.
When using the paddle shifters while driving in D mode, it's going back to automatic mode quickly, while during S Mode the car stays in the gear you've manually chosen for a longer time period.

But I think it makes no sense to intervene in terms of saving gas, because if you're using the gas pedal very softly, like I always do while fuel efficient driving, it's constantly at the lowest of the low possible rpms.

Thanks for the link, I'll read through that later.

Here's a animated GIF which shows what happens when I use the paddle shifter to go into the "next gear". :o

The RPMs are dropping but then the car goes immediatelly back to automatic mode and with that it shifts up and the RPMs rise. :rolleyes:

https://s5.gifyu.com/images/ezgif-7-c7ec8a755a75.gif

Direct Link to GIF:
https://s5.gifyu.com/images/ezgif-7-c7ec8a755a75.gif

Those figures look like the NEDC numbers, which Europe used upto 2018.

The new WLTP test actually has 4 outputs plus a combined figure.

1/ low
2/ medium
3/ High
4/ Extra High
5/ Combined

The NEDC figures have proven to be totally unrealistic but so far the WLTP figures are matching real world fuel consumption quite well.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...ltp-38181.html

I had a look for your cars wltp numbers but the closest car I can find is this one

https://carfueldata.vehicle-certific...used-cars.aspx

The wltp combined for this auto Civic is 33.76 mpg.

You're right, those were NEDC numbers (in Germany it's called NEFZ), I mistaken them. :o
Thanks for clearing up, I changed it in the original post.

Honda in Germany claims another WLTP value. Combined value in Germany. For the Civic 1.5 with CVT it's 37.8 MPG.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1582753477

Maybe that's because there is a slight difference between the fuel consumption of the Civic 5D (5-door = hatchback) and the 4D (4-door = sedan). I couldn't find the 4D with the 1.5 liter engine in the database of the website you linked.