Alan and Vulcan - Your FE will increase over time. I started out at 39, 43, 48, 42, 47, and then started getting around 49/50/51 from there on and was getting 400-500 miles per tank early on. You said your 4th tank with 1,000 on the odometer??? Is that right? That would be 250 miles per tank average. Yes the hills in SF will hurt you but the downhills help some too.

I've discovered something and might remember reading it on here somewhere but the CVT has a seemingly infinite speed range at 2,000 RPM (up to 70 mph can be no higher than 2,000 RPM sometimes). There is another range at 2,500 RPM and then above that it doesn't seem conducive to good FE. I drove back from Philly today and the first 90 miles were basically all at/under 2,000 RPM from Philly to near Harrisburg (through Lancaster along Rt 30) and stopped in Harrisburg at 54.5 mpg and that was in drizzle rain on snow tires. It was also mostly flat as the turnpike runs after that added elevation but also required the tach to go over 2,500 RPM. Elevation range was 180 feet near West Chester up to about 2,400 feet on the turnpike near the middle of the state.

Just keep your eyes well out in front and if you see a rise then slowly increase your speed on the downhill or flats before the hill so that when you go up the hill you don't need to go over 2,000 RPM. Try that and see if your FE increases over the next few days.

 

Flash, Im at the end of my 4th tank with around 1400 miles on the odo, I have been getting 370 miles per tank consistently. I hope it goes up. Thanks for the advice.

 

No prob, Vulcan. I was thinking about this today and remembered a quote from "Days of Thunder" where they mentioned about the tires that were getting burned up from Tom Cruise and he was told that he used to have half the horsepower and twice the tire width but now he has twice the horsepower and half the tire width -- just think of that with the Civic since you have 110 hp now instead of 450 hp so you might have pushed the pedal down 1 inch to enter an Interstate ramp but now you have only 1/4 the hp so you should only push down the pedal 1/4 inch. I had to re-learn how precise this gas and brake pedal can be. My last car was the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 with a mere 360-hp AWD (All-Wheel Drive) and now I have 110-hp FWD. Most people would think you could push down the pedal down 4 inches to make up for the lack of hp but this only gets you 9 mpg when you can plan ahead many times and increase slowly instead of like a jackrabbit and end up getting 40 mpg on the entrance ramp.

I don't get the 60 mpg others do but I'm better than the 30 mpg you are getting. You will find your median but it is all just a game each and every day that you get to play against your previous best FE numbers. It will help if you take side trips on weekends to learn how the car works and see how a 50-mile trip works out better than some short 15-mile trips. Enjoy and check back often. I just had my worst day in 3 months since it was raining, using the defroster, in traffic, and cold and got home after 350 miles back from Philly at 44.3 mpg. Today in the 28-32 F day I got home after 167 miles at 45.5 mpg -- not bad in the supposed dead of winter -- second real snowfall for the season today too.

 

Hi,

I just got an '07 HCH-II Monday Jan 15th. I thought about making a "my first post" but I saw this one.

I drive 55 miles to work it takes about an hour since it's 65mph the whole way and very light traffic. I live in Iowa.

I knew my first avg. mpg reading was off since the Salesman had the car warming up when I arrived to finish all the paperwork. I was probably running for 20 minutes I bet. The heat was on full blast too. So I ignored that reading. When I got home I filled up the tank and reset it. I drove a mile home and parked it in the garage.

The next day I woke up and when I left for work I started the car and took off. I don't like to let the car sit and "warm up for 5 minutes" I start it and usually let it run for 30 seconds or so then go on my way. The car warms up faster when you're driving anyway

The drive is pretty hilly but it's the most direct route any other way would add about 30 miles since the road I drive on is a direct diagonal road to Des Moines.

When I got to work my avg. reading was 32.2 mpg. I had the headlights on and heat going the whole time.

I was very disappointed, but not discouraged. My previous car was a '02 Subaru Impreza WRX. Tubrocharged and intercooled 14.1sec 1/4 mile was my best time with the stock setup. I bought it brand new in '02. I put 100,000 miles on it and now I'm not into the sports car thing, although I still love to watch rally races.

It seemed logical given my long commute to switch to a hybrid. I picked the HCH-II since I don't like the design of the prius.

My goal on the way home from work was to beat 32.2mpg. I watched my instant fuel display thing and tried to keep it around 50 or higher as much as I could without going way slower than traffic. When I got home my avg for the tank was now at 36.8. I figured that since I made 32.2 going 55 miles and then added another 55 miles and ended at 36.8. Simple algebra - I did close to 47mpg on the trip home. Now I've made that trip another day and and I'm at work now. Still on the same tank of gas and I now have the avg mpg reading 37.9. I think the first day really hurt me. We have also been having high winds 15-20mph and it's been very cold lately one morning it was -4 and it's been single digits every day taking a big hit on the FE I imagine.

Anyway I've already started playing the "game" with the gauges and it really helps out. Don't always worry about your speed. Let it vary and use your instant fuel gauge more.

Thanks all,

Hope to talk to you again soon. I better get back to work!

 

Welcome, Mel. Once your car gets a little more broken in you will be smooth sailing. You will notice the winds impact the car in a big way so just get used to driving behind some camper or semi or milk truck to let them block some of the wind for you. Just play the game every day and concentrate on one segment or area and not everything all at once. Also, use one of those trip meters for the entire tank and the other for either daily trips or maybe trip A for to work and trip B for from work. Enjoy.

 

Mel,

Good job on using the meter to 'play the game' and bring up your tank average. When you're working with such built-in disadvantages, like the extreme cold and high winds, you're bound to see some lousy numbers. Not to mention the fact that nothing that happens on the first 200 miles should really count, because the battery is still wonky. Yes, wonky is a technical term, I know. It'll be broken in by a couple of days from now, given your long commute.

At first I was shocked by your numbers. 32.2 on the way to work, and 47 on the way home!? You live in Iowa, so it's not like you're going hugely uphill all the way there and then down a mountain on the way back, so I decided that the new battery might account for it. I did check your computations, though, and the 'simple algebra' appears to be wrong. I'm not telling you this because I'm trying to be discouraging; quite the contrary. I think it helps to know why one lousy trip can mess up your averages so badly and keep your overall total down so far for so long afterward, so I wanted to correct you now to save disappointed expectations later. Let's look at the math.

You started out by driving 55 miles at 32.2 mpg. Miles = miles per gallon * gallons of gas, so you used 55/32.2 = 1.71 gallons to get to work.
Then you drove home. Your total was now 110 miles at 36.8 mpg, so you used 110/36.8 = 2.99 gallons total that day. That means you used 2.99-1.71 = 1.28 gallons to get home, which makes your fuel efficiency 55/1.28 = 43 mpg, rather than 47. 1.28 is far, far better than 1.71 gallons--- an improvement of 25% in a single day! good for you!!

If you think of all your fuel efficiency calculations in terms of the number of gallons burned, it's easier to see why one really inefficient period can sink the rest of your statistics. This is what I mean:

If you travel 400 miles at 48 mpg, you burn 8.3 gallons. If you had burned 8.8 gallons instead, you would only get 45.4 mpg.
If you travel 400 miles at 44 mpg, you burn 9.1 gallons- making it 9.6 gives you 41.7 mpg.
If you travel 400 miles at 40 mpg, you burn 10 gallons- making it 10.5 gives you 38.1 mpg. Etc.

So one big hit can take you down a few mpg even several hundred miles later. The psychological effects of this are not good- if you think you're not doing well and you don't see your numbers going up even when you're trying hard, it might be discouraging. After a good start to a tank, for instance, I'm more motivated to keep the number up, and I really work at it. So one thought might be to sometimes chalk a bad run up to trial and error, and zero out the tripmeter you're using to give yourself a clean slate and see if you can do better from then on.

P.S. Welcome to the forum and good luck with the new hybrid!

 

I sometimes think that I want to fill up the tank after just 300 miles because I was getting 56 mpg in 40 F weather rather than get back home at 600 miles at an overall average of 46 mpg. I think it would be the same though (to post a run of 300 miles at 56 mpg and then 300 miles at 36 mpg) so I just keep doing posts to the databse of full tanks rather than when it works in my favor. The last trip across the state and the return was good - after the fill-up my wife drove the car while I slept for the next 200 miles and I got in the car with an hour to go before home at looked at the dash to read 44 mpg. EGADS. I got it home reading 46 mpg after 300 miles and was quite pleased. I wanted to post just "my portions" of the trip but I decided to just stick with full tank posts only otherwise I would have 90 tanks posted like the mileage database leader.

 

Yeah I didn't actually do the equation to find out the correct answer I just guessed at it knowing that you could come up witht he correct answer using a simple algebra equation. I should have clarified that. I figured it was close to 50 since I kept the instant fuel consumption gauge near 50 or above most of the trip. Thanks for doing all that work finding the exact answer

I'm keeping track of my tanks. I'll get them entered in the database when I have some free time. I'm still only on my 2nd tank though.