Hi Billy

Many people have suggested I went down a huge mountain to get a shot of my 715mpg To Empty sig page you see below. I've never been further north than Orlando in my FEH, so there are no mountain to cruise down from in Florida. If someone has to maintain that Miles To Empty after the long mountain ride down, you will see a big drop in the MTE if they can't maintain it. Look at the angle of the shot that John explains is a half a tank and shows 370 MTE. My '05 gas gauge looks much lower from that angle, does yours? Notice the trip gauge was changed to total OD reading also.

There is no problem explaining techniques of how mileage is explained. Lets hear John explain how we can get to his 670 MTE on E-10 in an '05 FEH!

GaryG

 

County roads, gentle rolling hills of eastern Colorado, farm country.
30 or 40 miles between stopsigns, and very few "cold starts" per tank.
I only had 5 or 6 cold starts for 600 miles. That helps a lot right there.
I drive a lot for work, which is why I upgraded to an Insight.
Also, my freon has a leak, so my A/C is disconnected. ( no engine drag )
Yes, this means I sometimes have a warm battery. But no big deal if you never put it under max load. My Tav was 107 one day. This did NOT hurt MPG.

With Gary's A/C working, and living in Florida, his A/C would have come on at 85 degrees and never let the battery get much above that.

I still say 4500-5000 ft elevation makes the car run lean, due to less oxygen.
Then again, E10 ( I assume E10, the pumps only say "contains ethanol" ) should be putting some of the oxygen back in... I'm not sure if it really balances though.

I've noticed, and I've posted for 3 years, that the higher my elevation climbs, the higher my MPG climbs. OF course, there's less wind drag too, but at 30-40 MPH, is that a big factor?

Gary's right... you can't make your MTE shoot up quickly, it takes at least 3 tanks.
My last 3 in a row have been better than the one prior. I thought I would be to 700 by now, but not quite.
You also can't do a great 40 miles and keep topping off your tank either.
The longest downhill road I can find, and maybe the longest in the nation, is 40 miles long.
I think I read the tank has to move 20% or more between fillups for the computer to consider it a 'fillup' and recalc. I've done lots of short trips and top offs doing experiments over the years. The MTE won't recalc unless there are lots of miles in between.

Just for Gary, I'll record VIDEO of the next tank, from every possible angle.
He still won't be happy, I'm sure. He's just a grumpy ol' man, and nothing will change that!

 

If GaryG really knew the FEH inside and out, like he pretends to... he could have pointed out that the fuel needle does not always move in a totally linear fashion, thus, this was probably giving me false hope, as the real amount of gas was slightly more. But instead, he has to criticize my photography skills.

 

Update on my current tank with a car still breaking in. (3000 miles)

I'm 300 Miles into the Tank with a 245 MTE reading. Not too bad. I did end up with one trip at over 57 MPG on a 10 mile ride, but that was mostly downhill (as opposed to 31 MPG on the way there... That said, 44 MPG average was great). It stands to reason that rolling hills and 30-35 miles per hour streets actually provides the best MPG without dangering yourself or others. I often drive from the freeway offramp and run all electric for about 7 minutes (2.5 miles, 200-250 ft overall elevation change) to my house.

My last tank was 516 miles on the tank and it was filled up about 5 miles after the MTE hit zero. I guess this one is going to be much better.

 

That's very good! Keep it up, but also don't let it frustrate you, which has happened to me sometimes when my numbers were not as high as expected. This car is great!
I hope myself and others on this site will only encourage you more as you go along.

I'm shooting for 700+ MTE on this tank, then I need to give up for a while.
My parents are coming out next month for a visit, and I need to get my A/C fixed before they get here so we can ride in comfort, and then I need to pull a trailer. So after this tank, my numbers will only go down.

Updates for approx. half-way into this tank:



Everything in orange is from a ScanGauge tool plugged into the OBDII port.




I use 14 gallons for the ScanGuage Tank Size.






I could have shown the Navigation Screen MPG, but it dumps old data and thus more heavily weights recent driving. It was a tad over 50 MPG at this time. SG is close to reality. -John

 

Impressive numbers and photos and helps define ultimate capabilities of the vehicle. Yet, most of us realize we have enough stress in our daily life and don't need "burn ourselves out" attempting to achieve high numbers.

 

A good question, and one I get asked frequently is: How much is the hybrid, and how much is the driver? Put another way, what would the numbers be in a gas only Escape if I drove the same route, at the same speeds? I don't have the answer, but the numbers might be mighty close.

Well said. This last tank is going to give me my hypermile "fix" for a while.
Gotta focus on more important things. Oh no! What did I just say???

 

Well this knocked my socks off.

To be truthful, the car over-estimates, and always has by about 2 MPG.
Still, this is a PERSONAL BEST and maybe all time best?



So HOW did I do it? You are probably wondering, right?

Well, I found a road like this, and only drove counter-clockwise!


copyright M.C. Escher

Really though, I did find a rectangular circuit that was downhill on 3 sides, found this to be very condusive to high MPG, and went around and around many times.

More details to come, and I have a short video showing this is real and not a joke like the M.C. Escher drawing is... the video clip is 54 MB and I need to find a way to share it with you all. I'm starting a week long business trip, and I promise to post more after that.
I just had to share NOW!
-John

 

Oh... and by the way... that was NOT in a plug-in FEH from Hybrids-Plus.

That was in my own, 2005 FWD.

But now, I gotta call Hybrids-Plus and ask them if the MTE stops at 999 MTE or goes past!

I've never been behind the wheel of a PHEV for more than a few hours at a time.
So I don't know! Now I'm TOTALLY curious!

 

So I finally filled up (we went out of town the last three weekends). 536 miles on the Odometer and filled up 14.38 gallons (about 37.3 mpg).

After the fillup my MTE said 565 miles and after driving around last night (30 miles highway mostly) and to work this morning (14 miles city) with 45 miles on the trip odometer it says 530 MTE and the NAV MPG reads 43.5 MPG.

My dad drove the car a bit over the weekend to and from the airport twice (to drop us and pick us up), but appeared to do a good job.

It is finally nice enough here to not run the A/C in the morning and not run it very often in the afternoon (maybe 50% of the time).

So we will see what my next tanks has to offer. I'm more concerned with a 38 MPG tank than 500 milers now becuase I've done 2 500 mile tanks in a row. I'm shooting for 38+ mpg and maybe 550+ miles on the tank. If I can do really good with the A/C and whatnot I'm thinking 40+ MPG and a 600 mile tank might not be too far away.

I am definitally noticing I can go a bit faster in EV now as the car is breaking in. Before it would almost always kick out of EV at 28-29 mpg no matter how smooth my accleration was, but now I can coax it into the high 30s (rather than before acclerating up to 42 and backing off and kicking it into EV with a double brake tap)...

We'll see.