Hi All:

___The Force needed accelerate a given mass increases linearly with the change in acceleration in a perfect system. There is a lower limit as you do not want to hang at 45 mpg’s while accelerating for 60 seconds but it doesn’t matter where it comes from (ICE or Pack). You want to decrease that force at the tire/road surface interface by keeping those G’s down. The Prius II can come up on the pack but you do it slowly for maximum distance per a given loss of cap. Max torque from MG2 comes at the lowest RPM’s and the smallest force needed draws current in a minimal fashion. My experience in the Insight and Tom’s HCH-I was to bring them up without assist for the highest FE after a given distance down the road. Pack longevity concerns speaks for itself using this technique. The best I have seen without a FAS or P&G in the Insight was 100 + mpg after 1.3 miles from a dead stop and accelerating just below the assist regiment to a slow 45 mph cruise and hold in 85 degree temps. I could never seem to achieve that using the 1 through 5 or the 1, 2, 5 shift pattern method(s) with a 4 bars of assist for whatever reasons early on in the Insight’s career.

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes

 

Wayne, please forgive me but the jargon and verbal shortcuts make it difficult for a layman like me to understand you.

When you write about accelerating from a standstill, understandably the more gradual the better. When you say "without assist" in that context, do you mean using only the electric or only the ICE? I presume the electric is more efficient at that low speed. Do you agree? Would you say that a high rate of acceleration with an electric motor is almost as efficient as a low rate? Would the reason for slow acceleration with the electric motor be, primarily, to preserve the life of the battery pack?

 

Hi ElanC,

Assist refers to the electric motor assisting the ICE (or gas engine). Therefore, without assist means to accelerate with the use of the electric motor. This means accelerating with no bars of ASST. This is quite hard to accomplish in 2006 civic hybrid. It might be easier to accomplish this with the 'S' position on the transmission.

Thanks,
Stephane.

 

Agreed that it's hard, even when you're very gentle on the throttle. I pretty much have to accept at least a couple of bars just to get moving. Once you get up to around 10 MPH though, I can back off and lose the assist while still accelerating. S mode from a complete stop actually uses more assist.

 

Ah,

thanks for the update NASA. I haven't played a lot with S mode. I know that the RPM was higher in S mode. I didn't pay attention to the assist meter when I played with it.

Thanks,
Stephane.

 

If S uses more assist, are the engine RPMs lower at that slow speed than when you use D?

 

You know...I am really getting tired of everybody telling us how great their car is and what different driving techniques yield what results. I want to be the one to tell people and I can't...because I don't have the car yet!!!

But the good thing is that in a few weeks, I'll have a boatload of knowledge from your experimentation. I only hope that I remember everything...I have serious CRS.

Thanks guys!!! Keep up the good work and feedback.

 

No, RPM's are higher too. It's trying to give you as much power as possible by cranking up the ICE and the DC motor.

 

Yeah, the intended purpose of S is to emulate a second gear by giving you more power and increased regeneration (emulating "engine braking"). But it so happens that it doesn't use assist much (except at very low speeds) since that would just drain the battery quickly in the high-load situations it was intended for (such as going up big hills).

 

That's odd. If the engine is revving higher at the same speed, then it has more power available and should require less assist for the same acceleration.

If what you write is true, the only way I can explain it is that, like the ICE, the electric motor is spinning faster but using the same amount of energy, and the assist gauge is telling you how fast it's spinning, not how much electric power it's consuming.