I've been playing with Low instead of Drive, and was able to get EV to turn on at 40mph! The road I live on is all up and down. Although the speed limit is 55, I was able to go slower since no one was behind me. When I got to the top of the hill, I switched to low drive. By just barely touching the gas pedal, the car went into EV for the rest of the drive -- Cool!

I regularly cruise on EV at 30mph, even up slight upgrades, much better than the 25mph that Ford promises.

 

i get 40 mph in EV mode alot too. i have never tried to do using the low gear, i just start slow and can feel when the ICE wants to kick in and do a quick fake shift. i prefer to do 35, i can play with it a little and not worry about going over 40 and having the ICE kick in, find it hard to get it to go back with out going down hill or stopping all together.

 

So far, the best I've been able to do in D is 35mph (mind you, this is with A/C on, but not in max.) The L drive was a breakthrough, but has its limitations.

I've still not been able to understand the 'false shift' technique. I've tried letting my foot off the gas fully, but this doesn't work. I'm afraid that the rest of traffic would get mad at me if I suddenly hit the brakes.

Can someone explain the 'false shift' technique a little better?

 

If you have ever driven a car with an automatic transmission, then you know that as you accelerate, you can let off the gas pedal slightly to get the transmission to upshift. You then gently press on the gas pedal again to continue accelerating, without pressing down hard enough to cause it to downshift into a lower gear.

When you drive the FEH, since the transmission is CVT, it doesn't have gears to shift into. However, if you use the same technique described above, the effect is lower engine RPM and higher gas mileage.

Hope this helps.

Ray

 

The “Fake Shift” (FS) was developed by GaryG to rapidly recharge the high voltage battery when its state of charge (SoC) is very low. He found that:
1. When the SoC is very low, the battery will accept charge quicker than when it is nearly fully charged.
2. When the SoC is very low, the FEH will try to use the ICE and generator to recharge the battery which puts a significant load on the system and a large hit on your fuel economy.
3. For some reason, regeneration (using the FEH’s momentum and the traction motor as a generator) can put charge in quickly, reduce the time the FEH uses the ICE and generator for charging and results in an overall lower hit to the fuel economy hit.

To do a FS, start with a low SoC and an upper target speed of 41+ mph (just above EV mode speed). Shift from “D” to “L” and let off the gas pedal. The will regeneratively recharge the battery. When the FEH gets to a lower target speed of around 30 to 32 mph, that’s the end of the FS and Gary goes on to whatever his next operation is. If you go too much lower than this speed, it makes too big a fuel economy hit to use the ICE to get up to the upper target speed for a second FS or reduces your time too much in EV mode glide.

Gary seems to have made a couple of refinements to the FS technique recently.
1. One is that Gary’s appears to not rapidly drop the throttle, but to ease off of it. This seems to help to reduce heating of the battery.
2. Another is that he does not do more than two FS consecutively, again, trying to reduce battery heating, which inhibits the FEH from going into EV mode.
3. Gary has been able to get 70+mpg by using 2 FS consecutively as part of his drivin g technique. After the second FS, the FEH should be in EV mode and Gary shifts from “L” to “N” to extend his glide.

If I’ve not explained something right, hopefully Gary will be on later to correct it.

 

Chuck, I'll let Gary comment more if he wishes, but I think Ray ( 2 posts ago ) had a clearer, more concise description of the Fake Shift. You are mixing two methods at once, FS and Pulse & Glide.

While you can use both, it is sometimes advantageous to do one or the other.
For example, a FS will help at any speed ( even 80 MPH ) without involving L or EV at all. The 40 to 30, 40 to 30, method is P&G and you can do this with, or without FS.

-John

 

Gee, thanks for the credit there. As I recall, I was the one to first point it out (post four or so ever here on GH), and Gary came up with the numeric proof that it helps.

Anywho, yes, the description I always use is that if you had a manual transmission, you fake shift on the accelerator the same way you'd let off to shift gears, pretty much exactly as Ray said.

Also, Pulse and Glide doesn't necessarilly work real well with the FEH, particularly in traffic, but you can use a variant of P&G at higher speeds on the FEH to great sucess.

To the original point, I found that 40 MPH in EV is only attainable on my own vehicle (AWD) with some EV false shiftings and watching the Charge/Assist meter. With experience, it can get somewhat easy.

 

Hi All

The “Fake Shift” has been used without a name for decades by most drivers, the only thing I did was give it a name here on GH last year. As far as who gets the credit, I think we all worked on trying to improve our MPG as a GH FEH group and xcel (Wayne Gerdes). The thing that makes it much more valuable is the regen ability in Hybrids, and shutting down the ICE in "L" in the FEH. Honda and Toyota hybrid owners are now using the term FS for ways to charge their batteries and reduce RPM's also.

After reading the question and answers regarding the subjects in this thread, I would say, all of you are right regarding the Fake Shift. In the beginning, I posted how I used it to decrease RPM’s and give a light surge to the pack in “D”. This led me to FS in “D” repeatedly to reduce recharge time and the load on the ICE, I use the term “Fake Speed Shift” regarding that. Later, I dropped the “Speed” term completely, as I found an even faster way to charge the battery with the “L” FS. Today, I use the FS at all speeds for different reasons to push as much MPG as I can. GreenFEH is right on about how the Battery can take a heavy charge much better when it has the lowest SOC, I got that from Wayne Gerdes.

If I want to push the envelope on roads that will permit P&G, the best speeds for me is 25-35mph and keeping the SOC between ICE restart and two “L” position Fake Shifts. At stops along the route, I try to prepare the battery with two “L” Fake Shifts and an “L” regen in EV coming to a stop. This allows me to accelerate back to 30mph in EV under the SOC in the battery, and if I’m lucky, I can get one glide back to 25mph in EV. The reason I used 35mph as my max is because with the second “L” Fake Shift, the FEH will slow down to 30-32 before the tach drops and your in EV. The moment I see that EV is going to happen, I change to “N” for the glide down to 25mph. In EV at 25mph, I pulse back to ~30mph and glide in “N” again to 25mph. This is a total P&G in EV. Generally, as I begin to pulse in EV again, I get a ICE start-up at around ~27mph and continue to pulse to 30mph with the ICE-ON and begin another Fake Shift in “L”. Most of the time, the SOC is still so low, the battery will take the first good “L” FS charge without the ICE trying to shut down. The FS for charging only last about 2-4 seconds before I accelerate again.

As far as the 40mph in EV question, I take the FEH to 43mph, shift to “L” and FS so I go EV as close to 40mph as possible. This is when I see the tach move and go to “N” for the best glide. Same thing if I’m slowing down from above 43mph, I make the shift to “L” or tap the brake lightly at 40mph to go EV. The best part about tapping the brake pedal, you can do it in “N” from a ICE-ON glide and stay away from regen slowing you down. I use this method if I don’t need to charge the battery going into EV or have a concern the battery will do a burn off with a ICE run up.

Hope this helps.

GaryG

 

Thanks, Chuck (Green FEH). I'm going to try the technique you described, even if it is not the 'actual' fake shift. I've noticed already that the L drive allows me to regenerate the battery if I don't have my foot on the gas pedal. I should be able to do this on my route home every day, as long as no one is behind me (the speed limits are either 30mph or 45+mph -- welcome to a medium-size town!)

The fake shift explained by Ray Martin makes sense also. I can see doing this during my usual driving.