Rush hour pleasures

Just got back from a run to the airport. The first part of my trip is on surface roads with a 45 mph speed limit. But the majority of the trip is highway and when I was about halfway to the airport the mileage readout said 48 MPG.

Then I saw the brake lights ahead. A long line of traffic snaked into the distance, as far as I could see. Funny thing is, it didn't bother me as much as usual. Not that I love bumper to bumper traffic all of a sudden, it's just that now I know that it will probably give me an opportunity to up my MPG for this trip.

As soon as I braked the Fusion switched over to electric. Yeah, I'm not burning gas in this baby waiting for this to clear up!
We crept along, stop and go, the mileage bumped up 50, 51, 52, finally the traffic cleared up about 2 miles down and I had reached 55.6 MPG.

Traffic is never fun. But now you can save money when you hit a bit of it. Kinda crazy!

Charge Management

As I have gotten better and better at exceeding the EPA mileage rating for this car, I've learned more about how the
battery charging system works. And, how to maximize the charge, or as the title of this entry "Charge Management".

One thing I noticed pretty quick, you can get some incredible mileage on short hops to a store and back. But, what was
happening was that I would leave with a charged up battery, and return with the charge quite a bit lower. So the mileage
figure wasn't accurate. So, keeping that charge up is important.

Now, what happens if one just depletes the charge. As stated in an earlier entry, eventually the gas engine comes on and
runs for a few minutes to charge the battery back up. I've noticed that this happens in two different patterns.

The first pattern is this: the engine comes on and runs until the battery charge is a bit higher then midway on the gauge. This seems to be quite precise and the engine shuts off at the same point each time. Once the charge line gets to the top of the "+" and "-" signs on the gauge, you can run in electric again.

Now, as I said, there is a second pattern of charging that occurs. I'll call this a "deep cycle charge". What happens here is that the engine keeps charging until the charge is at the top of the gauge, quite a bit higher then the former charge cycle.

This charge cycle seems to come on every day at some point, when I'm doing around town suburban driving. I talk a road trip on the highway today, and it did not come on at all, probably because the battery tends to stay charged up in highway driving.

Automatic battery cycling

OK, the title of this entry may sound a bit nerdy. . .and probably is. But worth talking about for sure.

One thing you will notice pretty quickly is that if you try to get every last ounce of power out of the battery, by driving on it as much as possible and not giving it adequate time to recharge normally, eventually the FusionH will just override your inputs and start charging the battery. When this happens, it will not kick over into EV mode no matter what your input. You can stop at a traffic light, or drift down a long hill, still the engine will be running recharging the battery. This cycle will run for some period of time, it seems like maybe 5 - 7 minutes, and then you will see the charge rise on the charging gauge and once it gets to a high enough level you will begin to be able to engage the EV mode again normally.

I'm still learning about this cycle and intend to do another post shortly as more info becomes available.

Keeping the hybrid battery charged

One thing you realize quickly with the FusionH (and Prius and Escape and Insight) is simply this: the more charge in the battery the better your MPG is gonna be. So part of the art of maximizing your mileage relates directly to keeping your battery charge up.

I'm still figuring out all the nuances of how the battery charging works and will devote an upcoming post with more details soon. However, I've come up with one trick that is easy to do and helps keep the charge up.

Here's how it works:

Remember that the braking system on the FusionH is really a generator that feeds power back into the battery. Every time you use the brakes you are recharging your battery. In fact you can see this on your battery gauge, especially after a few stops right in a row. Now, the way I use this to my advantage is going down long hills. If you have a good size hill that you are going down, and you are at the speed limit and no one is behind you, then you can lightly "ride" the brakes so that the battery charging symbol comes on. In many cases this isn't riding the brakes at all, it's simply engaging the generator. As the car tends to pick up speed going down a hill, you can hold it back to the speed limit and the generator will send power right back into the battery. If you are on a good size hill, the gain can be quite significant.

As always, one needs to use normal good judgement and care in any type of driving technique, including this one. For example, if I'm coming down a hill and there is an aggressive driver right on my bumper I would not use this technique so as not to aggravate the driver behind me, who is in a rush and perhaps not really focusing as much on safe driving skills as he or she should. It is always critial to be aware of other drivers who are distracted or aggressive or not careful and stay as clear of them as possible.