Sister bought a Camry hybrid - 78.9 mpg (US) in ideal P&G conditions
 

The runner up was a 325i (?) sedan. The deal-maker was the new federal tax credit for efficient cars that made the Camry a little less expensive than the Bimmer.

Totally different cars. But they weren't comparing the two on the same criteria - they liked each car for different reasons.

The Camry will probably end up using roughly half as much fuel as the BMW, which gets my thumbs up.

I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Nah, she's a point A to point B person. I don't think technique will be high on the priority list. Her husband on the other hand will enjoy playing with it. He's already admitted he spent far too much time looking at the various displays during the test drive http://www.gassavers.org/images/smilies/smile.gif

I certainly am curious to find out what it's capable of!

I might have had a tiny amount of influence in the purchase decision. But only in the sense that my bro in-law and I often yack about FE and the latest mods on the Blackflea. And he got a ScanGauge for their minivan after I got one.

EDIT: But he also readily admitted that "saving the universe" (e.g. good MPG) was lower on their priority list than safety features and financial considerations (initial ones anyway).

I should have added, the car she was driving before this was a '93 Camry hand-me-down from our dad. It was starting to be afflicted by rust issues (body, fuel & brake lines, exhaust.. hmm just like the '93 ForkenSwift...)

Bro in-law phoned this evening: he loves the car. Said the drive home from the dealership this afternoon was "the most fun I've had in a car at legal speeds". That's a great sign.

Of course he spent most of his time trying to EV it everwhere, so his FE wasn't great - around 6.8 L/100 km or about 35 mpg (US) in a mix of urban & freeway driving. The Canadian rating is 5.9 L/100 km.

Its EPA rating is 43 city/37 highway.

I can hardly wait to go play with it.

PS: SW, they were driving a rented 325 sedan this week.

The bro in-law said he also really liked driving it - but only when he was going fast http://www.gassavers.org/images/smilies/smile.gif

He also said he had a heck of a time filling it up when they went to return it today - pump clicked off a whole bunch of times. He said he'd read that was a quibble with this model.

Played with the Camry today with my bro in-law. Fun, fun, fun.

Went to a quiet subdivision and tried to figure out how to P&G with it. They've got the base model, without the NAV video game feature, so there's only a small b&w LCD in the gauge cluster that shows energy flow (and a bunch of other stuff).

Trying to achieve "deadband" consistently (no energy flow to or from the battery) - ie. pure gliding - was very difficult. It would take quite a bit of practice to become sensitive enough to use the pedal to get that state on command.

Also, the thing doesn't have a "trip" FE meter! Toyota: that's just silly. Only current tank (and maybe also lifetime) is available. I guess you could stick a SG2 in it.

So I wasn't able to get a fuel consumption number for my driving. All I know is when we were done, the "eco meter" bar graph that graphically reports on the current trip was maxed out (on the good side). We didn't note the km's on the odo when starting out, so couldn't reliably back-calculate the FE from the change in the tank FE.

The car congratulated me when I shut it off: something like "Excellent!" appeared under the eco meter graph. http://www.gassavers.org/images/smilies/smile.gif

Oh - and it's a nice car too.

Lessons were minimal. He let me drive and observed. When we were done, he said: "I could never drive like that. I'd go crazy." or something to that effect http://www.gassavers.org/images/smilies/smile.gif

I'm hoping the bro in-law just overlooked the "trip" FE feature in the manual. It seems like such a big oversight.

(days later...)

Talked to the bro in-law today: He says he's been pegging the eco-meter on almost every drive since I last saw him. http://www.gassavers.org/images/smilies/emthup.gif

He said the scale stops around 5.8 L/100 km, which means he's doing around 41 mpg (US) or better. And this is on the car's first tank of gas. The tires aren't even pumped up.

How to get almost 80 MPG in a Camry Hybrid: perfect conditions, P&G
 

(May 29/07)

Spent about half an hour in the Camry today. My bro in-law found a nearly ideal "ring road" in a commercial area in Ottawa that permitted almost unmolested driving at P&G speeds.

We were able to squeeze 78.9 mpg (US) on this route from a warmed up car.

Conditions were great: dry; 21 C; Wind W 11km/h; Relative Humidity 43%; Pressure 102.45 kPa.

Since it's a ring road, this is a fairly close approximation of what's possible on a round trip on a more normal route, since we were continually averaging head/side/tailwinds and returning to our "starting" elevation (the change was certainly no more than 10 feet).

I learned on cleanmpg that using neutral in the Camry is one way that you can bypass the difficulty of feathering the pedal to try to glide. But you must let the engine stop before going for neutral for the glide. If you pop it into N before the ICE has autostopped, it will not autostop. Also, when in N, you have mechanical brakes only - no regen. (Suspect this is stuff Prius drivers already know.)

Note that:

1) I have precious little experience driving hybrid drivetrains.
2) The tires were only at Toyota's recommended pressure.
3) The car is not broken in - only on its 3rd tank of fuel.
4) We may have been dealt a small penalty from the constant steering through the arc of the route.

All of which is to say that this car is capable of more under ideal conditions with an experienced driver and some more pressure in the tires. 80+ would be no problem.

Note also that we used my SG1 to get these figures (no nav screen) - the offsets/calibrations for my Firefly (Metro) were removed and the engine size param. was changed for the Camry.

---

For fun afterwards, we re-set the SG1 with the Blackfly's offsets and returned to the route. Using the same upper/lower indicated P&G speeds as the Camry (55/25 km/h) I saw 129 mpg (US).

Afterwards, I realized I forgot to compensate for the Firefly's pessimistic speedometer (from the transmission swap, it's roughly 5% off) - so that 129 mpg run was actually achieved at a slightly higher average speed than the Camry's run.

Bro in-law says he doesn't regret not getting the BMW. Reason: you can have fun doing what the Camry does best all the time. If you do what the BMW does best all the time, you'll lose your licence.

(Jun 28/07)

Did about a 1000 km mostly freeway trip with my sister in her Camry.

The tank there: about 6.1 L/100 km (37.9 mpg US), maybe 25% urban / 75% freeway, into a light (<15 km/h) headwind, with A/C. Driving conservatively.

Return tank: 5.7 L/100 km (41.3 mpg US) , 95% freeway, driving conservatively, little wind, little A/C use.

Car is rated 5.7 city & 5.7 hwy by Transport Canada. Rated at 40 mpg/city and 38 mpg/highway by the EPA.

It's got about 5000 km total on the clock. Based on this trip, I'd say here's another car whose fuel consumption ratings will be nearly impossible to beat if driven "normally".

On my shifts behind the wheel, I didn't P&G, but did moderate DWL, and stuck to the right lane. Average freeway speed was probably 105 km/h (65ish mph). I passed maybe a dozen vehicles over many hundreds of kilometers. My sister drove a few km/h faster on her shifts, but still mostly right lane, below the average speed of traffic, and wasn't as steady with the pedal.

It's been a long time since I drove such a quiet car. It was an eerie sensation at first.

RIP sister's Camry hybrid...
 

Distracted driver smashed into it last night while it was parked in front of her house:

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1637984480

Insurance hasn't said yet, but it's surely a write-off.

Not often we see a thread span 14 years!

Buy it back and make a flatbed truck.

Was the perpetrator headed back toward the street? When it happened to me it was the left side.

Wow, a thread before my time... I've still got my truck and motorcycle from before this thread era. The Subaru was totalled in the intervening time, which led to purchasing the 2006 Acura (in 2010)

Interested to know what will replace it.

If I lived in a jurisdiction that didn't have inspections, I'd probably do something like that.


Good thing (for my automotive hoarding impulses) I live in a jurisdiction that has inspections! :D



Yeah, that's the bizarre thing: being hit on the right side! The perpetrator's car -- VW Tiguan -- ended up on my sister's lawn. She also mowed down the kids' basketball net.


I asked my sister if any of the neighbours have doorbell cameras. Only the immediate next-door neighbour does, that she knows of, but it's on the wrong side of them to show anything useful.


This is the 2nd parked Camry that's been totalled in my family. My brother lost one to a hit and run about 20 years ago.

Me too! Unfortunately, my sister's life is hectic enough these days that it will be replaced with whatever she can get ASAP with the least amount of hassle.



The good news is she'll probably get a lot more for the Camry from insurance than it's worth in the used car market. Bad news is new & used car prices are currently inflated way above normal.


I will report back...

Surprisingly, it took until Friday for the insurance company to declare my sister's car a total loss. It's been at a body shop since the crash.

They offered her $5k for it, which would be generous in normal times.

Ironically, the rental car they gave her to drive is a VW Tiguan - the same car that wrecked hers.

So now she's shopping for something used, and not being very picky about it.