I have only had my HCHII for one week and I am averaging 45-47mpg on my commute, that essentially is a climb up 3000 feet and then down the other side with lots of other small hills. I find the gas pedal to be very sensative and actually very little variations in how I use it makes all the difference in the world, especially when not on the highway. Keeping RPMs less than 2000 when you can will help a lot I have found. A/C on or off has not effected my mpg very much.

I hope to get closer to 50mpg next week and I am still on my first tank. I do drive differently now, and frankly much more safely than I did with my previous car due to the instant feedback on my driving habits.

I wonder what the roads would be like if everyone had instant feedback on the mpg of their driving habits...

Mill

 

The real killer for gas mileage on the HCH is:
1. Using the air conditioning. It knocks it for a loop. I wont be without it, when needed. I am not sweating until gas money gets tight!
2. Outside temperature seems to really affect the mileage, not much you can do about that.
3. Dont be a lead foot. Drive easy, but dont hinder traffic. SUVs are bigger than your car, dont make'em mad.
4. Running over 70 mph. When I do dealer transfers for Honda, I experiment with the speed, ie reset meter and run at 78 mph, then slow to 70 and do same, run 65 and do same. You can easily knock 6-10 mpg off your average above 75 mph. Hard to get on freeway these days and run less than 80, you get run over.
5. Short trips, no time to warm up.

I have a 05HCH CVT with around 12k on it and have avgd around 40mpg. Have driven maybe a half dozen new HCH2 and maybe more HCH1 along with Accord Hyb doing dealer xfers. I believe I could get about same mileage in an Accord Hyb as my 05 HCH, but just cannot justify the extra $10K. That is why they sell sparingly. They are really nice and FAST!

You ought to at least get 40 in the HCH2 unless youhave short trips with no heat up time.

 

we had 112 degree temperatures today and i had a road trip with 5 people and the air conditioner set at 69 degrees. we averaged 51.7 mpg.

i've found the a/c to be pretty efficient surprisingly. it does affect mpg but not nearly as badly as i had thought.

 

I've done a little testing on my HCH-II and found this to be particularly true IF we operate the AC with automatic climate control ON.

I noticed that if I set the ACC temperature to, say 25C to 27C (77F to 80F), my milleage appears to suffer less. I believe this may be due to the fact that the climate control system is more effective at engaging the hybrid scroll compressor in the electric only mode.

The key as well is to drive our vehicles to maintain a good IMA State of Charge especially in the warmer days. The system will then use less of the Belt driven scroll compressor and instead use the DC brushless driven side of the compressor.

I think many of us report the FE as being severly impacted by the use of AC because we do not adjust our driving strategy and we continue to use the State of Charge to maximize Fuel Economy. When we do so, we increase the chance that the belt driven compressor chamber will be activated more often. And THIS will place load on the ICE and kill our FE. More so than preventing extreme EV assist and EV mode only from occurring.

So, here are my personal tips:

1 -When you must operate the AC, drive with the automatic climate control ON !
2 -Set a confortable temp range (not too cool though).
3 -Maximize the IMA charge. This is difficult to do in city only traffic - but not impossible. In other words, avoid using IMA to assist the vehicle as much as possible - use no more than 2 to 3 bars of assist if you must -less is better. There are lots of good tips on this site, and Tarabell's article will help alot too!


Does this make sense ?


Cheers;


MSantos

 

Where you set the A/C temperature on the climate control makes a HUGE difference. 76 degrees or so is comfortable but has much less effect on mileage than 72.

 

Yeah the short trips do kill FE I work about 10 minutes away from where I live.

 

Been driving for 4 days, I get 35mpg... and still improving each day. It is so cool looking at the number creep higher each trip. My mpg killer is having to part with the a/c on every now and then. (90F outside)