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

[MetroMPG]

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.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by Z

I'd be interested in what kinda of mileage she gets. I wonder if it's going to be off as much as the Prius if you just drive it like a normal ICE. Is she interested in driving techniques? Metro I know you'll love it if you ever get some time in it.

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

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

[MetroMPG]

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).

[MetroMPG]

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...)

[MetroMPG]

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.

[MetroMPG]

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

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.

[MetroMPG]

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.

Oh - and it's a nice car too.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by Z

No trip FE is definately a bummer. Toyota dropped the ball on that one. The pedal is touchy but after a while you don't even think about it. How did the Brother-in-law do? I think you need to give him and sis some more lessons.

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

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

[MetroMPG]

(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.

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.

[MetroMPG]

(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.