I now have over 1000 miles on my TCH. Today was my second stop at the gas station. 13.59 gallons for a distance of 540 miles is 39.74 MPG! Most of the trips have two adults and two kids. I was worried I'd pull the TCH milage down, but this second tank brings my average up to 37.6 MPG.

Happy traveling.

 

I just got back from filling up my 3rd tank. I went 583 miles on tank 3 for an average of 41.3 according to the nav display but if I just do the math 583 miles / 14.5 gal = 40.4 mpg. I'm not sure what is more accurate.

Randy

 

I'm about a quarter through the second tank right now @ about 690 total miles. The display is saying that I'm averaging 36.something which is higher than the first tank already but honestly I haven't been trying to drive it correctly that often. I still need to adapt to driving sensibly to get the most out of it.

 

I'm on my second tank and the display is reading out 32.2. How crappy is that. And this is mostly city driving, feathering the accelerator as much as possible.

 

In my experience there are only certain times you want to feather the pedal, definitely not all the time:

• If traffic is moving very slow, feather to keep the engine from starting.
• You've reached 40mph and have backed off the pedal to let the car fall back to EV
• Maintaining highway (or back road) speed so instant FE guage needle rides low

Being too lite while accelerating, climbing hills won't help. The analog FE guage is a really good indicator. If you are feathering the pedal and the needle is riding high, then why bother continuing to feather as your mileage is currently sucking anyway. Get it up to speed quicker so the needle will drop down quicker.

If you're in brutal stop and go traffic though, maybe that's as good as it will get. I am usually able to do EV about 15% - 25% of the time and I'm keeping steady in the 38-40 range on my current tank.

 

I suspect that feathering the accelerator will result in lower mpg than accelerating "normally" or slightly faster than normal to a few mph faster than you want to go, then feathering the gas to keep your speed from going too low.

An obvious exception would be creeping between red lights on EV power. Then feathering the gas to avoid the ICE starting between red lights makes perfect sense.

I find I can "take off" from a stop without the ICE if I gently get rolling, then add more power until I'm accelerating at a slow but steady pace. However if I'm going to go much faster than 20mph or so, I think it makes more sense to use the ICE to get up to speed, then back off and use EV mode if I've only a few blocks before stopping again.

I'm 570 miles into my 3rd tank, showing 43.5 on the tank average. If I could avoid more short trips and AC usage, I know I could get the mpg up higher. The best I've seen was 46mpg for 210 miles on the tank average.

 

Thanks for the responses. I do try and get up to speed and coast, there are just not so many places to get up to 30-40mph and coast here in Boston. 32mpg would be like 20mpg in a regular camry though. Even a 4-cyl.