Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Ridiculously Active Enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,567
From: Northern Illinois
Re: Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Hi Lakedude:
___Well here it is then. You have between 3 and 5 binder applications before you lose Power brakes. Not brakes, power brakes. If you have tapped your brakes that many times, you entered into traffic at to high a speed in most cases. If I come into this situation, I will start her back up and shut her back down … Lakedude, you appear to have it pretty lucky as you are not out on the highways at 60 + for miles on end like many of us 
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
Originally Posted by lakedude
While I FAS with out a second thought many feel it is too dangerous a technique. Others will draft trucks but I feel that drafting is not safe so I don't do it. Wayne how would you feel if someone who lacked a full understanding of the dangers of FAS tried the technique, ran out of power brakes and crashed their car?
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
Ridiculously Active Enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,567
From: Northern Illinois
Re: Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Hi ElanC:
___Trivial pursuit or not, if you can squeeze a 1/3 mile long glide from the drive because you backed in, is it worth it? If I make a right on the bottom of my drive, I have a good 1/3 mile free trip. If I had to back out into the street to head that direction, I lose it all except for the free coast down the drive backwards. I am just explaining to you how it works when you park Face in at the mall, your place of work, your drive, wherever. Those thimbles of gasoline keep adding up at each and every stop if you do not Face out and they do affect your segment, your tank, and your lmpg. How and where you Face out is definitely different for everybody but if you want to waste fuel, always pull into a parking spot Face in. A thimble full of fuel will take an Insight ~ 1 mile at slow highway cruise and that is one mile lost for those folks
___As an edit, here is a post about that thimble full of fuel
Warm Air Intake vs. Warm Air Temp
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
Originally Posted by ElanC
The difference between backing in with a warm engine or backing out with a cold engine is probably not enough to fill a thimble with gasoline. I think it's trivial pursuit. There are other ways to save gas, such as planning your trips carefully. One less trip to the supermarket will save you more gas than a year of backing into parking spaces. Unfortunately, cutting back on trips isn't as sexy because it doesn't show up anywhere on your fuel efficiency stats.
___As an edit, here is a post about that thimble full of fuel
Warm Air Intake vs. Warm Air Temp
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
Last edited by xcel; Dec 14, 2005 at 06:04 PM.
Thread Starter
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Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 78
Re: Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Wayne / Xcel,
we know that you are obsessive about mileage, this point comes across loud and clear. But you don't have to rub it in everybody's face. The amount of electricity taken by your computers CPU to run to type this across to use, at least 25 times in thise 'newbie' thread alone could lite a christmas tree for 15 minutes, and I'd rather save electricity cause that is one of the only resource that pretty much everybody in the states uses.
Please, if you want to talk about hypermilling, go for it, but this thread isn't the best place as its intent is for newbies like me and the many other newbies that will be coming in in January.
Let's get on with our lives. I sincerly think that we all have a higher calling in life then arguing about .1MPG WHEN PEOPLE ARE STARVING TO DEATH IN AFRICA.
Stephane.
we know that you are obsessive about mileage, this point comes across loud and clear. But you don't have to rub it in everybody's face. The amount of electricity taken by your computers CPU to run to type this across to use, at least 25 times in thise 'newbie' thread alone could lite a christmas tree for 15 minutes, and I'd rather save electricity cause that is one of the only resource that pretty much everybody in the states uses.
Please, if you want to talk about hypermilling, go for it, but this thread isn't the best place as its intent is for newbies like me and the many other newbies that will be coming in in January.
Let's get on with our lives. I sincerly think that we all have a higher calling in life then arguing about .1MPG WHEN PEOPLE ARE STARVING TO DEATH IN AFRICA.
Stephane.
Ridiculously Active Enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,567
From: Northern Illinois
Re: Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Hi Slajeune:
___I do not see what you see as obsessive in obtaining high FE? A few seconds of thought and it just happens. It is that simple in a car and on a route you are intimately familiar with. If you think this discussion is about a measly .1 mpg, why is the HCH-II’s overall average less then a particular members non-hybrid Accord? .1 mpg isn’t worth discussing. 20 + mpg’s definitely is!
___This is just another thread with a ton of new hybrid owners looking in that I can see light bulbs lighting up … If you were a new race car driver in a race car forum and Jeff Gordon was writing up post after post about higher speeds and how to maintain it in traffic and around corners and such, do you think you would listen or would you say he is obsessive? If you were a bicyclist in a bicycle racing forum and Lance Armstrong was writing up post after post as to his training regiment and cycling technique in traffic as well as the climbing stages, would you call him obsessive? My own initial drive out explanation to Bluecivichybrid is extremely important because he is the only person on the planet at this time that has almost breached 100 mpg’s while cruising down the highway in an HCH-II. He just doesn’t have the knowledge or experience to put his entire drive into the same category is all. Or his commute is not conducive to a string of techniques to nail down that 70, 80, or 90 mpg segment possibly? This thread’s OP does not touch upon nearly the facets that make an HCH-II something worth telling your friends and family about given any Honda Civic CRX HF or Geo Metro can kill the HCH-II’s 49/50 EPA even though most of us would not be caught dead in one of those in this day and age. NASA has seen it for brief instances of the HCH-II’s real world capability and Bluecivchybrid has seen that kind of FE for almost entire segments. If you do not teach the new HCH-II owners properly, you have a ton of random thoughts and posts heading in all kinds of directions with 0 gained. If you hone down the skill sets for a particular type of condition and what to do when you see it, you have opened up the world of hypermiling for those that hadn’t a clue as to how it was done in the first place and who now will hit the ground running and might just save a few ounces per trip or gallons per day/week.
___About my PC. She uses a 1.4 MHz Celeron de-clocked to 935 MHz. She is a relative lightweight in the power use aspect although there is enough power to run spreadsheets and word documents
As another edit: If you want to see an exceptional new hypermiler in suboptimal conditions, check out Laurie’s latest. This is a testament to doing the right thing at the right time …
Wow! 65 mpg in the snow???
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
___I do not see what you see as obsessive in obtaining high FE? A few seconds of thought and it just happens. It is that simple in a car and on a route you are intimately familiar with. If you think this discussion is about a measly .1 mpg, why is the HCH-II’s overall average less then a particular members non-hybrid Accord? .1 mpg isn’t worth discussing. 20 + mpg’s definitely is!
___This is just another thread with a ton of new hybrid owners looking in that I can see light bulbs lighting up … If you were a new race car driver in a race car forum and Jeff Gordon was writing up post after post about higher speeds and how to maintain it in traffic and around corners and such, do you think you would listen or would you say he is obsessive? If you were a bicyclist in a bicycle racing forum and Lance Armstrong was writing up post after post as to his training regiment and cycling technique in traffic as well as the climbing stages, would you call him obsessive? My own initial drive out explanation to Bluecivichybrid is extremely important because he is the only person on the planet at this time that has almost breached 100 mpg’s while cruising down the highway in an HCH-II. He just doesn’t have the knowledge or experience to put his entire drive into the same category is all. Or his commute is not conducive to a string of techniques to nail down that 70, 80, or 90 mpg segment possibly? This thread’s OP does not touch upon nearly the facets that make an HCH-II something worth telling your friends and family about given any Honda Civic CRX HF or Geo Metro can kill the HCH-II’s 49/50 EPA even though most of us would not be caught dead in one of those in this day and age. NASA has seen it for brief instances of the HCH-II’s real world capability and Bluecivchybrid has seen that kind of FE for almost entire segments. If you do not teach the new HCH-II owners properly, you have a ton of random thoughts and posts heading in all kinds of directions with 0 gained. If you hone down the skill sets for a particular type of condition and what to do when you see it, you have opened up the world of hypermiling for those that hadn’t a clue as to how it was done in the first place and who now will hit the ground running and might just save a few ounces per trip or gallons per day/week.
___About my PC. She uses a 1.4 MHz Celeron de-clocked to 935 MHz. She is a relative lightweight in the power use aspect although there is enough power to run spreadsheets and word documents
As another edit: If you want to see an exceptional new hypermiler in suboptimal conditions, check out Laurie’s latest. This is a testament to doing the right thing at the right time …
Wow! 65 mpg in the snow???
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
Last edited by xcel; Dec 14, 2005 at 06:43 PM.
Pretty Darn Active Enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 387
From: Northern California
Re: Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Originally Posted by slajeune
Hi All,
I have read a lot of different threads on improving fuel efficiency on the Civic Hybrid 06. There is a lot of information but the information is in a lot of different threads. As a lot of people will be getting their Civic hybrids shortly, I think that it would be a great idea to summarize all of the information in one thread!
Having said, this, I will need some help. Basically, I will try to recap what I have read. Please let me know if there are any mistakes in what I write. I will edit the first post in this thread so that people can easily see the best technics.
Also, since this is to be used by first time hybrid owners, I want to make this as readable as possible. It should be written in clear english without the use of acronyms. We can use acronyms but with the english definition first (i.e. higher fuel efficiency (FE) can be achieved by ...).
Think of this as a Honda Civic Hybrid (HCH) 06 FAQ!
Note, this is what I have gathered so far, things will change.
Also note that my intent is for this to be a good primer from an 'every day, average driver' point of view. This is not intended as a how to get 1000 miles from your tank. It is meant to follow 80%-20% rule. This should be seen has how to quickly achieve the 80% goal. I want this to be a 'civic 2006 hybrid for dummies' kinda guide. For people to get 1000 miles from their tanks, they will have to work on the remaining 20%.
Non driving fuel efficiency tips
When heating the car, turn the A/C off
To heat the car in colder weather, turn AC off when using AUTO mode by following these steps:
- Press AUTO to set automatic climate control on
- Adjust temperature
- Press A/C button to turn the A/C off
Zero fuel consumption glide
This is the first thing to try and achieve once you get your new Civic Hybrid 2006! Basically, what happens is that the fuel engine stops consuming gas. You know you have achieved this state when your Instantaneous (current) Fuel Consumption Display (the display on the top left of your upper display area) is maxed at 100 miles per gallons (MPG) or 0 liters / 100km. To enter the glide follow this technique:
- When your are rolling at a desired speed remove your foot from the gas pedal
- Wait until your Instantaneous (current) Fuel Consumption Display maxes out to 100 miles per gallons (or goes down to 0 liters / 100km) and that you see some regeneration (green lines on your ASST / REGEN display)
- Very gently press on the gas pedal. Your aim is to eliminate the regeneration and (if possible) get a few lines of assist (1-3 lines of ASST)
- Let yourself glide! Please note that while gliding, you will gradually slow down.
This is probably the single most important technic to master. What I suggest is that once you get your car, find a flat stretch of road with very little traffic where you can practice this technic without the fear of getting yelled at or honked.
Civic hybrid 06 city driving technic
This is what I understand is the most efficient way to achieve good fuel efficiency in a city environment (stop and go with traffic):
- When starting from a stop or a light, accelerate to the desired speed using about 50% assist (50% bars on the ASST display)
- Once the desired speed is reached, perform a zero fuel consumption glide as discribed above
- Learn how to maximize battery charging by changing your breaking technic.
Civic hybrid 06 highway driving technic
There are 2 major technics here: using cruise control (which seems to give adequate fuel economy) and using pulse and glide (a more advanced technic that truely maximizes fuel efficiency).
Using the cruise control
- Reach the desired speed
- Set cruise control
- To maximize fuel effeciency, keep your speed at around 60 miles per hour (or 96 kilometers per hour)
Using pulse and glide
1- slowly reach 60 (as per NASAngineers test, this seems to be the best highway speed) miles per hour (or 96 kilometers per hour) without using any assistance (no bars on the ASST display)
2- Go into a zero fuel consumption glide
3- You will decelerate slowly
4- When you reach xx (this lower limit is still to be defined) miles per hour (or xx kilometers per hour) go back to step 1
That's it for now! Please comment this post, we need to summarize all of the knowledge in one post to really help people get the most out of their cars!
Cheers,
Stephane.
I have read a lot of different threads on improving fuel efficiency on the Civic Hybrid 06. There is a lot of information but the information is in a lot of different threads. As a lot of people will be getting their Civic hybrids shortly, I think that it would be a great idea to summarize all of the information in one thread!
Having said, this, I will need some help. Basically, I will try to recap what I have read. Please let me know if there are any mistakes in what I write. I will edit the first post in this thread so that people can easily see the best technics.
Also, since this is to be used by first time hybrid owners, I want to make this as readable as possible. It should be written in clear english without the use of acronyms. We can use acronyms but with the english definition first (i.e. higher fuel efficiency (FE) can be achieved by ...).
Think of this as a Honda Civic Hybrid (HCH) 06 FAQ!
Note, this is what I have gathered so far, things will change.
Also note that my intent is for this to be a good primer from an 'every day, average driver' point of view. This is not intended as a how to get 1000 miles from your tank. It is meant to follow 80%-20% rule. This should be seen has how to quickly achieve the 80% goal. I want this to be a 'civic 2006 hybrid for dummies' kinda guide. For people to get 1000 miles from their tanks, they will have to work on the remaining 20%.
Non driving fuel efficiency tips
When heating the car, turn the A/C off
To heat the car in colder weather, turn AC off when using AUTO mode by following these steps:
- Press AUTO to set automatic climate control on
- Adjust temperature
- Press A/C button to turn the A/C off
Zero fuel consumption glide
This is the first thing to try and achieve once you get your new Civic Hybrid 2006! Basically, what happens is that the fuel engine stops consuming gas. You know you have achieved this state when your Instantaneous (current) Fuel Consumption Display (the display on the top left of your upper display area) is maxed at 100 miles per gallons (MPG) or 0 liters / 100km. To enter the glide follow this technique:
- When your are rolling at a desired speed remove your foot from the gas pedal
- Wait until your Instantaneous (current) Fuel Consumption Display maxes out to 100 miles per gallons (or goes down to 0 liters / 100km) and that you see some regeneration (green lines on your ASST / REGEN display)
- Very gently press on the gas pedal. Your aim is to eliminate the regeneration and (if possible) get a few lines of assist (1-3 lines of ASST)
- Let yourself glide! Please note that while gliding, you will gradually slow down.
This is probably the single most important technic to master. What I suggest is that once you get your car, find a flat stretch of road with very little traffic where you can practice this technic without the fear of getting yelled at or honked.
Civic hybrid 06 city driving technic
This is what I understand is the most efficient way to achieve good fuel efficiency in a city environment (stop and go with traffic):
- When starting from a stop or a light, accelerate to the desired speed using about 50% assist (50% bars on the ASST display)
- Once the desired speed is reached, perform a zero fuel consumption glide as discribed above
- Learn how to maximize battery charging by changing your breaking technic.
Civic hybrid 06 highway driving technic
There are 2 major technics here: using cruise control (which seems to give adequate fuel economy) and using pulse and glide (a more advanced technic that truely maximizes fuel efficiency).
Using the cruise control
- Reach the desired speed
- Set cruise control
- To maximize fuel effeciency, keep your speed at around 60 miles per hour (or 96 kilometers per hour)
Using pulse and glide
1- slowly reach 60 (as per NASAngineers test, this seems to be the best highway speed) miles per hour (or 96 kilometers per hour) without using any assistance (no bars on the ASST display)
2- Go into a zero fuel consumption glide
3- You will decelerate slowly
4- When you reach xx (this lower limit is still to be defined) miles per hour (or xx kilometers per hour) go back to step 1
That's it for now! Please comment this post, we need to summarize all of the knowledge in one post to really help people get the most out of their cars!
Cheers,
Stephane.
For highway driving, i think you have to be more specific about how many bars of assist to use in zero-fuel consumption glide.
If you use 4-5 bars of assist in ev-mode, you can maintain speed or slow down very slowly on a flat road, but the battery charge will deplete very quickly and you'll be put into a forced regen mode at around 4 bars of battery when pulsing, which is inhibitive for FE.
If you use 2-3 bars of assist, you'll definitely slow down, but battery charge will deplete slower. You can have a chance of recharging the battery again when you're pulsing (with about 1 bar of regen)
If you use 0-1 bars of assist, you'll slow down quickly and have to pulse more often. however battery state will remain pretty much stable/steady.
i'm going to have to conduct tests to see this: mostly whenever i've been in ev-mode i've been using 4 bars of assist, but the battery state of charge drops quickly to 4 bars of battery, and the car goes into 3 bars of forced regen when i'm pulsing. it makes the car feel even more sluggish. I'll try to see what's the mpg difference between 2-3 bars and 4-5 bars of assist in ev mode along the same route.
50-60 mph is my ev-mode speed range btw.
Thread Starter
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Joined: Oct 2005
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Re: Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Hi bluecivichybrid,
very good point! Until we have more data, I will simply state what you said, the more the assist you use in the EV glide on the highway, the more it will try to regen on the pulse. Once we have defined what the best assist is, the guide will be more specific.
Thanks for the info!
Stephane.
very good point! Until we have more data, I will simply state what you said, the more the assist you use in the EV glide on the highway, the more it will try to regen on the pulse. Once we have defined what the best assist is, the guide will be more specific.
Thanks for the info!
Stephane.
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Joined: Oct 2005
Posts: 700
From: El Cerrito, CA
Re: Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Originally Posted by xcel
Hi ElanC:
___Trivial pursuit or not, if you can squeeze a 1/3 mile long glide from the drive because you backed in, is it worth it?
___Trivial pursuit or not, if you can squeeze a 1/3 mile long glide from the drive because you backed in, is it worth it?
Also, you're not giving up a 1/3 mile glide by parking head first. The only cost of backing out into the street, for you, would be what it takes to start up the engine and accelerate to 8 MPH, and then shut it off.
Ridiculously Active Enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,567
From: Northern Illinois
Re: Civic hybrid 06 driving technic summary thread
Hi ElanC:
___Backing out over a child would certainly make your day, wouldn’t it?
___And that acceleration to 8 mph vs. no ICE-On is worth what? I would take the free ride every time as it is an absolute waste to do anything else. Do you like burning gas because you can?
___See the sig? Just the facts Elan, just the facts
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
Originally Posted by ElanC
It's not worth backing into the garage and breaking a taillight or scratching the side of the car, let alone damaging the garage wall
Originally Posted by ElanC
Also, you're not giving up a 1/3 mile glide by parking head first. The only cost of backing out into the street, for you, would be what it takes to start up the engine and accelerate to 8 MPH, and then shut it off.
Originally Posted by ElanC
Heh heh. You really don't have a humble bone in your body.
___Good Luck
___Wayne R. Gerdes
