Hey GreenHybrid community, this is my first post. Looking forward to becoming more active here. I've had a 2003 Civic Hybrid for about a year now and have put around 5000 miles on it in that time. I've noticed that my Highway MPG hovers around 45, even with windows up, max psi in the tires, ac off, staying at 55mph, and drafting when possible. I DON"T pulse and glide because I'm worried about causing issues with the CVT when I shift back into drive from neutral at speed. I've seen people here and on the ecomodder forum get better milage with few modifications and using similar techniques. What am I doing wrong, or what can I do to improve? I have a budget of about $100 for any "mods" that might be suggested. Any ideas?

 

Describe the behavior of your SoC gauge. Do you ever get recalibrations?

Have you confirmed mileage with fill-up calculations?

 

What do you mean by recalibrations? I don't do any fill up calculations. Guess I should start doing that.

 

Does your battery meter ever drop to a very low level, force charge and then climb back to nearly full?

You should also confirm you have the correct tires, size and LRR.

The mileage meters are not particularly accurate. Some are, some aren't. Confirmation with fill-up is really necessary anytime you have concerns about mileage.

 

Right. The "mpg" calculation my 2003 shows is invariably 5-10% better than the actual miles / gallons at each fill up. If the car says "40 mpg" it is most often really 38 mpg. This has held true even as the IMA battery slowly fades into the sunset, and the mpg it delivers falls off. Whatever the car calculates, it is always too high.

That's the cumulative mpg, from the reset. The instantaneous mpg display is largely fantasy, as far as I can tell. There is some correlation with actual fuel consumption, but that's about as far as it goes.

 

It has dropped very low on several occasions, but only when going up steep inclines for a long time. It always fills up at a normal rate, I've never seen it go from empty to full in less than 10 minutes. I'm not running low rolling resistance tires, just regular Michelin Defenders. Couldn't get LRR at Costco. Size is correct however. Thanks for the help.

 

Huh. I had no idea that the instantaneous display was like that. I can definitely understand why the trip mpg display would be set to be a little optimistic.