Hello, Andrew! Though I don't have an FEH, I had to post to your thread because you're from Schaumburg. I'm sitting at my desk at work in Schaumburg right now. Hello!

Secondly, good for you for planning to go hybrid. If you have to get an SUV (and for someone as tall as you, I can understand the decision more than for most), then going with an FEH, which gets twice the gas mileage as the rest of them generally do, certainly seems to be a smart thing to do. Have you seen the gas prices out there today? It doesn't look pretty.

Thirdly, there are a bunch of GH members locally, and we sometimes meet. I've only gone to a gathering once, but about twenty of us showed up in Schaumburg and there will probably be more get togethers in the future. Head over to the Chicago Hybrid thread and announce your presence, if you have the urge- future hybrid owners who want information are always welcome around here.

Best wishes!

 

I agree with the rest of the posters. You can drive it normally and get good gas milage. The worst mileage that I had was for zero to 20 degree weather, about 23mpg. In the summer I got 31 to 33mpg and that was with the AC running all of the time. I have the a 4wd Mariner (great in the snow). Not a perfect car, but real close in my book.

Rick

 

My milage on a 4WD model is quite a bit less than most post around here. My wife and I tend to get around 23 mpg. We get that driving a lot of short distances in San Francisco. Work is about a 4 mile commute through many stop signs and up and down a big hill. I'd say that is about as bad as it gets for optimal milage.

My wife has more of a lead foot than I do and doesn't put much effort into keeping the ICE off. In other words, she is a normal driver. If she drives the car, the milage tends to drop to between 21 and 22 mpg in the city.

When I drive, to the frustration of those behind me sometimes, I can get maybe 25 mpg in the city. It really helps to have longer trips, however, to get to that milage.

I can see that if we lived in a smaller flatter city that we would get better milage. Longer streches of 35 to 45 mph with stop lights rather than short blocks with stop signs really helps.

Still we get the best milage on the freeway. We just had our best tank with around 33.6 mpg by driving from around Sacramento (in the a valley) to Lake Tahoe (around 6k feet and cold) and back. That tank of gas included a lot of driving between 65-70 pmh and some low speed driving around the lake area. Had the engine running at pretty high RPM trying to keep up with a friend of Donner pass, going from lake level to over 7k feet at over 70 mph. But the ICE could handle it, so what more do you want than that?

Don't get me wrong, I really love this car even if it doesn't get as good milage as I thought it might in the city. By comparison, it gets about the same milage as my 10-year old manual-transmission Hyundai Accent. Not bad for a much bigger and nicer car.

 

The problem with inner-city driving is the stopping and starting. You just never have a chance for regeneration so the engine keeps starting and running. The repeated short trips make it worse as the ICE must run on every startup, and for such a short distance it may run almost the whole trip.

For me, hills aren't so bad for FE..... On hills....you may only get 10mpg on the way up, but on the way down you should get 50+mpg so overall hills aren't so bad in my experience.

 

Marcus: in a place like San Francisco, at least you don't have as much severe cold weather to drain your mpg. Up and down steep hills, stop and go- all of that is bad. But a little fog never sapped anybody's mpg the way a Chicago snowstorm can! I guess someplace really hilly, with lots of traffic and terrible winters might be the worst place for mpg. I don't know what would fit that bill- maybe Denver? Just a wild guess- please don't be offended, people from Denver!

 

I'm an "average" hybrid driver. I go through phases where I'm willing and able to drive more like a hypermiler would, but for the most part I am a middle of the road hybrid owner/driver; I'm not the leader of the pack on the roadway, but I'm not holding up traffic, either.

You can see all my tanks (and the corresponding MPGs) by clicking on my GreenHybrid ticker/signature at the bottom of this message. I use A/C (though not Max. A/C, and I live in a climate conducive to not having to use climate control at all other than a little vent air blowing on me, for much of the year.) I have been known to squeal the tires off a stop a time or two (accidentally, mind you! There's some power in 'thar wheels!), and I don't think twice about passing a vehicle if need be, even if I watch the real-time fuel economy plummet for that instant.

I love my hybrid but still drive like a slightly more conservative version of my earlier self (and that conservative nature's in part due to having a baby immimently on the way -- it's not all just hybrid efficiency consciousness.)

I hang out in the slow lane unless I'm passing now, which is the only major change in my driving habits post-hybrid purchase, and that's just because my goals have changed. In my old 4-banger gasser, I honestly didn't enjoy driving.... it was a chore, and something to "get over with, already." So I'd do an entire cross-town commute on the highway without a second thought, and I'd fly along at the pace the faster folks on the roadway were going (up to my own personal limits, depending on conditions.) Now, with my hybrid, I honestly ENJOY driving, and much of that stems from its fuel efficiency, although honestly it's also because the vehicle is new and safer than my previous vehicle (I had a 14 year old Toyota sedan; wonderful car, but no airbags and such. I was always conscious that in crash tests it'd rated a "Driver Fatality" at something like just 23 or 30 mph.), has a working radio and, some will scoff at this, but provides better visibility of the roadway/situational awareness since it sits higher and more in line with the typical vehicles I encounter on the roadways here in South/Central Texas.

 

I live "near" Denver.
Please see signature below.
- John

 

I guess that makes your fantastic numbers even more of a personal achievement, gpsman1! Good for you!

 

That's not what I was trying to say at all.

I AM saying that Colorado ( or mountains in general ) are actually BETTER for fuel economy, not worse. 15-20 MPG going uphill plus 100-200 MPG going downhill divided by two makes a great average round trip!!!

-John

 

Actually fuel injected vehicles DO get better mileage at higher elevations due to the reduced air density - the engine is a smaller pump. 15% smaller in Denver. I was always amazed at the mileage I could get between Ft. Collins and Denver (fairly flat) when I lived there. Mountains are another story though, except maybe for hybrids.