Ecodriver shows you 5 simple Tricks of how to save on fuel and drive really efficiently with hybrid cars. Don't worry, this is not one of those turn-off-the-heating-when-it's-freezing-outside-Videos, this is proper use of Hybrids.
Just let them go. In twenty minutes you will still see them racing away and braking madly. I remember driving for over 200 miles with one of these on the road, he kept racing forwards and slowing down dangerously, and we finally both took the same motorway exit at the same time. It had become embarrassing because I felt he was getting angry at my still being nearby, but never mind.
I have been searching for the information you have provided in your excellent video on the internet during the last 2 years frustrated, disappointed and without success. Your instruction is the best, most intelligent and the only user’s guide how to drive hybrid cars efficiently (at least) in English language. You must be not only expert in the subject but concise in explaining it. Thank You! By the way a lot of your advice could also apply to normal combustion engines. I had a VW Golf SDI which had done 150000 miles in nearly 20 years. On average I got the max MPG possible for that model, i.e. 65mpg (3.6l/100km) simply by the way I drove. Except the consumables everything else was still the original including the battery and the exhaust.
Thanks for all the useful tips. Have been getting used our Dacia Jogger Hybrid and am loving the more relaxed driving and trying to get the best economy from the car.
I have learnt such a lot from your tips on ECO driving and have increase my overall mpg on my 1.6 diesel mild hybrid Sportage. Thanks for the excellent advice.
I just purchased a 2019 Ford Fusion Hybrid, with 13,000 ‘murica units, so I really appreciate the tips/tricks. I am very much looking forward to developing my efficiency maximizing techniques over the next weeks & months.
Saw the video on the Yaris Cross and was impressed, I was about to comment asking for a video on tips for driving more efficient. But it is already here and I am already subscribed :)
Excellent! Very informative and educational. Was actually reassuring to see the explanations and see that we are already doing this in our standard diseal but can be refined for when we get a plugin. Hope to see more of these in future :) 👍😎😁
I agree great advise! One thing I would add though, if I may. A very important factor in deciding which type of vehicle, whether hybrid, plug-in or full electric, is the length of the trips you take. I find that a hybrid needs, at a bare minimum, 6miles(10 k) to begin to see the benefit of it's technology and that longer would be better especially in the winter. One or two mile trips to the grocery store or church get an electric or plug-in. If that's not practical for some reason, may just as well stay with a regular internal combustion engined(ICE) car. Looking forward to watching your other videos, oh and your english is very good. I know no one who's english is perfect and would feel more comfortable keeping it that way.
Thank you very much! You're absolutely right, there are more driving profiles which are not perfect for a full-hybrid. I chose just this one as this is glaring obvious for me during my consumption tests.
@@arieshilan I hope that's not your daily commute but if it is the first thing I would recommend is moving closer to your job. Speaking for my Niro's optimum conditions; best speed would be doing a constant 45-50mph, avoiding traffic lights or traffic jams, no hills and avoiding headwinds. The manufacturer's recommended tire pressure for my Niro is 36psi but I bump mine up to 40psi, not recommending that but that's what I do. Under no circumstances should you go over the max press embossed into the sidewall of the tire. Also going to too high a press can cause more rapid tread wear and the tire more susceptible to injury from road debris and potholes which will not save you money but add to cost. Everybody has their own style so experiment see what works for you.
@@arieshilan Hi Arie sorry for not getting back to you sooner. The short answer to your question is a diesel. I used to have a VW Golf and it would do 75mph on ski trips and get 40+mpg routinely, 600 miles out of a tankful. Naturally a diesel's not very Eco friendly. Your commute makes charging most EV's to 100% a daily necessity. At those rates the expected battery lifespan will degrade rapidly so an EV is not a good choice under these conditions, at least for the foreseeable future. A hybrid pounding out fast highway miles will probably return fewer mpg than something like a Honda Fit for instance if you're antithetic to diesels. Also, is this going to be the do all vehicle in the family or is this the second go back and forth to work car? A plug-in hybrid might even up the mpg score a bit but they are more expensive and since you'll be packing on about 35k miles a year may not make sense either. In the end you need a cheap throw away that goes fast and gives great operating economy.
Hello from Greece !!!! I have got the yaris cross and really the instructions you have given us are very important and correct !!!!!!! I have applied them and the gas consumption both outside the city and inside the city is 3.4 to 3.5 liters per 100 kilometers !!!!!!!!!! the driving speed is within the Limits and a little more than those of the traffic signals!!!! THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!!!!!!
Great advice. I've always thought the key to it is (1) maintaining momentum, and (2) mechanical sympathy -- every car has its own strengths and weaknesses, and therefore requires a different technique.
@@ecodriver1746 Many thanks for your help. Most appreciated. I am going to book a test drive in the Suzuki Swace, as most of my driving will be around the city. The MPG should be very good!
I do nearly all the tips you mention in my 2018 Camry Hybrid except the accelerating gently. Typically, taking 50 seconds to accelerate slowly to 100 kph will use the same amount of fuel as taking 25 seconds to 100 kph, the fuel flow rate may be double but for half the time. Also, I would rather a direct fuel to wheel energy flow, than fuel/recovered braking energy to battery and then battery back to wheel energy flow with the significant conversion losses. When I see a green light 500 meters away, it's more probable to be red when you get there and if you see a red light 500m away it more probable to be green when you get there. If you see that it's already red for a while or already green for a while then you can adjust your prediction of what it will be when you get to the light. My simple rule is almost never accelerate to a speed such that you will have to then immediately use the brakes to reduce it. It's not so much how quickly you accelerate but getting to the best speed such that you don't have to destroy the valuable excess momentum you just produced. I can't understand how people race up to what is clearly slower moving traffic ahead and turn most of their momentum (i.e. fuel) into waste heat via the brakes. Good use of these techniques also extends your brake hardware life by an order of magnitude. Slow accelerating hybrid drivers onto a motorway or open road with nothing to cause them to brake ahead is the bane of the hybrid driver "profession". Accelerating hybrids slowly in every traffic situation is low down on the list of what will bring improvements in efficiency that you will notice. Even worse some of these slow accelerating hybrid ecowarriors brake at the last minute thinking that the braking doesn't use the fuel when it is burning off the precious excess momentum that they generated unnecessarily.
Amazing, I was doing all of this except the last tip on my own after months of experimenting. I am now able to get a minimum of 5.1 miles per kilowatt on my EV. Sometimes when I use the cruise control to provide slow acceleration I get as high as 6mpKw
I was thinking of buying a full hybrid. After watching this video, I'm not so sure anymore. I realized that I have to be a physicist to take advantage of the low fuel consumption🤣🤭
It becomes second nature after a while. If you can just minimize brake usage by not going up to such a speed that you have to brake just after accelerating, that nearly 90% of the efficiency improvement. It's not the slow acceleration that saves the fuel, it's how much you can avoid braking especially braking at higher speeds by anticipating the traffic flow and traffic signals ahead.
Your advices are good, but if one follows all of your advices like not stopping at traffic lights by slowly driving toward them, slowly accelerating from full stops or near stops, and slowing down when going uphill to take advantage of gravity, eventually you will get shot by an angry driver, who lost patience and had to pass you, although there were a lot of cars in the other lane. Your video of a hybrid car slowly approaching a red light but not stopping, while several cars in the left lane that stopped completely, shows some of the cars in the left lane were frustrated by the hybrid car's going slowly. So people driving hybrid cars need to use common sense when trying to maximize their gas mileage because no high gas mileage is worth your life!
Good advice I use most if not all of the techniques described and get average mpg of 70 in my toyota Corolla touring sports hybrid but I drive in normal mode and use ac as I still value comfort and don't want to hold up traffic but I have done a eco test and achieved 82 mpg on a mix of city and highway driving and I believe there is still some room for improvement my average score is 95 the big advantage of hybrid particularly toyota due to the fact that they have the most experience in the industry is the car is cheaper to purchase only about 50%of the cost of a full electric and no need to plug in
@@MontyGumbydoubt it. Got toy yaris and I get his numbers if I'm absolutely eco and mindful of my driving to be smooth and he gets those numbers in a less efficient, relatively speaking, car and normal driving mode? Ok, no. I mean it's also advertised at under 60mpg so idk. He said average numbers as well
I learnt that the hard way, I went on a 18 minute drive yesterday and noticed my gas mileage was far closer to EPA estimates... sometimes it even surpassed .
I know what you meant, but you misuse the word “power” several times. What you describe, as decreasing with higher speed, is acceleration (or force). Simplistically, since POWER=TORQUE*RPM, an electric motor has full torque, but not power, from 0 to some moderate speed. In a BEV that speed is usually around 65 kmph (40 mph). Above that speed, it has full power and decreasing torque (and so acceleration). This is important, because of how you suggest using EV Drive. It may sound counterintuitive, but EV Drive is the least efficient drive mode for (non-plug-in) HEV. Yes, the motor is very efficient, as you described. But its source of electricity is ultimately the engine. Using the engine’s mechanical power directly is most efficient of its output. For EV Drive, it is converted to electricity, converted to a different kind of electricity that can charge a battery, stored in the battery, drawn out of the battery, converted back to the motor’s kind of electricity, and finally used. Each step adds loss that doesn’t exist in the direct path. But engines don't work well at low power, like when you start driving from a stop. Where EV drive gains, is at low speeds (low power) where the engine would be very inefficient. For example, a Prius engine generating 5 kW needs about 250 grams of fuel for each kWh. But at 10 kW, it needs only about 220 g/kWh. And it is best at 21 kW, needing 210 g/kWh. The engine turns on when it is more efficient to over-generate power, and use the excess to put back into the battery what was used in EV Drive.
At what speed the highest power is produced may vary from motor to motor, you can find ones that have kind of a flat line up to a certain speed, others have their highest power output directly from the start and then decrease. It often depends on how the software is set up. Often the enormous peaks of torque at very low revs are softened in order to make the cars driveable.
@@ecodriver1746 The variation you mention is why I said "simplistically." But it is not what you think. Again, you are confusing acceleration and power. Power and Acceleration are defined terms in Physics. In the case of a car's propulsion, acceleration is proportional to torque, but power is proportional to torque times rpm. That’s why it takes more power to get the same acceleration as speed increases, In an electric motor at zero rpm, power is zero even when torque is not zero. You can never have power that is greater than the current rpm times the motor's maximum torque. Simplistically (again), max power increases linearly as rpm increases, until you reach the motor's max power limit. Then power stays constant as rpm increases, and torque decreases. You can sdee this explained at ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Uum9nffLasQ.html
Hi Helmuth Thank you for your very informative videos on eco-driving. I have recently acquired a 2022 RAV4 Hybrid and am still in the process of breaking it in and developing my eco-driving skills. Unfortunately I have a long way to go before I can get anywhere near your remarkable figure of 4.0l/100km for the RAV4! The question I have is whether Cruise Control is a feasible option in any circumstances for efficient driving? Many thanks for your kind attention.
Use low ethanol fuel that stays good longer in tank if you drive a lot in electric mode . 98 in Europe. Premium in USA. (they only have 5% ethanol and stay good like 6 months)
On long downhills I just turn the ignition off. On highways I stay within two feet of 18 wheelers in their slip stream. In cities I open my door and push off with my foot for the first few yards. I often wait for a strong tail wind before starting my trip.
If you go down hill for a long distance with an hybrid vehicle (Honda CR-V e:HEV) and the battery is fully charged, which is better for the reliability of the car, to continue using the regenerative braking or the classic brakes? Once the battery is full and you continue to use regenerative braking, the car will use the internal combustion engine to consume the excess energy produced....
When the battery is full the regen-mode can't be used, as there is no way the energy can go, so the mechanical brakes are used anyway, or - if it switches on - the ICE with the injection cut off.
@@ecodriver1746 So, will the Honda CR-V e:HEV automatically switch on the ICE when engine braking is required (with its battery full)? If yes, does it do this in D or B mode?
everything you say there, you have in the new Honda HR V ... with the B function activated and the control of the levers behind the steering wheel .. ! and the absence of Honda in the clip is strange... a layman like me would almost bet that the Honda system is better than the Toyota
What is the point to get a new car with better MPG and start to driving more efficiently.... you could have done same with your older car that wasn't Hybrid. Very disappointed..... I got 2023 Honda CRV Sports Touring. And I got a sports trim for a reason so I can have more power and more torque.. so I can drive sporty and still having a good MPG but since I got it months ago I cannot pass 30mpg.... very disappointed I was looking to get 40 MPG by me continue driving how I drove, sporty
Same! Right now I’m averaging 29. I keep telling myself “well it’s not bad for an suv with awd and fully loaded”. Yet honda said to expect an avg of 40. So idk 🤷♂️
i get 72 MPG on my Toyota Yaris 2021, and that's with hard acceleration occasionally, I use the regen braking to its max potential, almost to a fault really because my break disks have rust on them that you would expect on a vehicle that barely gets driven, and I use the Yaris every day. It makes me giggle when I hear people bought a 'sporty' car to be driven on public roads.
@@crex8751got same toyota same year, what's with the rusty disc brakes situation and how is regen braking helping with that? You mean driving in B mode sometimes to clean up the rust or what?
I appreciate the effort you have put into your videos, but hearing every little sound your mouth makes grosses me out. use a noise suppressor or something dude.
@@ecodriver1746 notice you had the Honda HRV Hybrid in Ecomode,is this beneficial to the economy of the vehicle?Also ‘B’ mode is it worth using?Thank you.🦘🦘🦘🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
