How to Handle a Hybrid

How to Handle a Hybrid
From Amory Lovins at the Rocky Mountain Institute: "How to Drive a Hybrid Car"

To get a state-of-the-art 4-/5-seat hybrid-electric midsize sedan to perform at ~53–55 mpg (it’s rated at 55) rather than in the low 40s, it needs “pulse driving,” which differs in two ways from our old driving habits:

1. When you see that you’ll need to slow or stop up ahead, start braking gently and as early as possible so you recover the most braking energy back into the battery for later reuse. Priusrecovers 62–66 percent of braking energy in its regenerative mode, but if you brake too late, hence too hard, the mechanical brakes will override, and they simply turn motion into useless heat.

2. Contrary to what we were all taught in high-school driver’s ed, when you’re accelerating up to cruising speed, do so briskly. The engine is most efficient at high speed and torque, so you’ll use less fuel accelerating aggressively for a short time than gently for a long time.

Note: Many reviewers test hybrids driven in the same way as non-hybrids, then gripe that hybrids fall short of their rated efficiency by more than non-hybrids do. This is incorrect; properly driven hybrids can actually match their EPA-rated mpg more closely than non-hybrids can. (My Honda Insight hybrid, for example, averages 63 mpg and is rated 64, the difference being more than attributable to snow tires; Toyota’s U.S. Executive Engineer, Dave Hermance, gets 53–55 mpg on his 55-mpg-rated Prius.) Consumer Reports is a major source of this confusion, having repeatedly refused to print a correction explaining that its standardized test procedure disproportionately reduces the mpg of the hybrids it tests. CR also calculates combined city-highway mpg differently than EPA and automakers do.

Consistent with attentive driving, you’ll also find it very instructive, when driving a hybrid, to keep an eye on the real-time mpg display and (like a videogame) use the feedback to improve your driving habits for best mpg. —ABL "