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Re: PHEV - Questions and Advice

Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2019 5:19 pm
by jerrytaff
There several online articles with the authors excitedly reporting that they can recharge the PHEV from the ICE by revving hard in Sports mode. However, that is inefficient and pointless. As I understand it, you had to burn 13 miles worth of petrol to gain 5 miles worth of electric charge. Given that petrol costs about 4 times as much per mile as the electricity, this is not a cost effective way of using the car. Due to the inefficiency in converting the power it ends up costing about 10 times as much.

I understand that this was not your aim, just a result of the way you drove to keep the speed down.
I think that if you need to keep the speed down you are best off, in normal auto mode, using a light foot on the controls - Avoiding the use of the ICE and using regenerative braking on the down-hill sections. I must admit that the lack of a clear indication as to when using regenerative braking and when using friction braking means that I have tended, like you to use the manual shift mode and a low gear to avoid any possibility of overheating the brakes on steep descents.

I think the variation you have been getting must be due to running the ICE at different RPM each time.

Re: PHEV - Questions and Advice

Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2019 9:53 pm
by radar2018
I feel I may have misled you, I used 4 miles of petrol to get 5 miles of EV, the other 9 miles where after I had used up the EV,

I did the same journey yesterday, used the same procedure and only gained 3 miles with the same petrol.

I find it difficult to keep it slow enough using auto, about 7 mph without throttle, how long can you keep the brake pressed, something must be wearing.

My driving figures are reasonable I think (87 % ECO, 13% normal, 0% aggressive)