5 Tips how to drive Hybrid-Cars really efficiently!

hi everybody welcome to eco driver my name is helmut in this video i show you five tips and tricks how to drive hybrid cars more efficiently there was some demand from my viewers for some general guidance to eco driving and i will do a series of four videos with the most popular drivetrains and talk about their idiosyncrasies when it comes to eco driving so this is the first video and this is about full hybrids tip number one gentle braking firstly braking is a good idea to avoid accidents full stop however from a physics point of view braking is converting energy we build up speed with the car by using a lot of energy and this energy is now stored in the movement of the vehicle that's called kinetic energy so when we are reducing the speed this energy must go somewhere and with electric or electrified vehicles like full hybrids this energy is converted back to electric energy and can be stored in the batteries well we have to keep in mind that the electric motor on most common hybrids there are exceptions but if most vehicles with most hybrids out there the electric motor is rather small and weak doesn't have a lot of power and for accelerating in city traffic or just starting from a standstill 40 50 60 70 kilowatts isn't the problem because electric motors have uh their highest torque when they start beginning to rotate so once the electric motor starts moving you have the highest torque and that means you have enough power when accelerating from a standstill but the faster you go the less power the engine has the torque goes down rapidly and the number of revs cannot compensate for the loss in torque so [Music] we have noticed when you go with an electric car or a hybrid at higher speeds you don't have a lot of power and in most cases with hybrids the combustion engine kicks in now let's have a look at braking when braking electric vehicles or electrified vehicles the electric motor works as a generator and in the process of reducing the speed electric energy is produced however normally only about 65 to 85 percent of the nominal power of the electric motor can be produced while braking so if you have 50 kilowatts for driving you probably have around 40 kilowatts for braking and this means especially at a little bit higher speeds i'm not talking about 150 kilometers an hour we're talking about 40 50 60 kilometers an hour you probably don't have enough power to reduce the speed properly with the electric motor only what happens the friction brakes are used so in order to make the best possible use of the potential breaking energy stored you need to break gently i'll show you here an example of the ford explorer which is a plug-in hybrid but the principle is still the same you see here this little box and this indicates the potential breaking energy and the little bar inside indicates how much of this potential energy is produced at the moment when braking and once you exceed this little box that means you see here it turns white and this means the friction brakes are used because the electric motor doesn't have enough power to break the car properly tip number two keep the car in motion this one is related to braking especially in city traffic try to keep the car in motion i hear people say hybrids stole the braking energy and use this to accelerate the car so it's best to brake a lot and so you have more energy to accelerate well the perpetua mobiler isn't invented yet as i have explained earlier firstly the electric motor doesn't have enough power to break the car properly especially from higher speeds and secondly the the electric mode is producing roughly eighty percent of the power it has a little available for accelerating when braking well that is what the motor does but when it comes to consumption it's more than the motor it's the whole car and when you look at the process of driving or accelerating there are other forces which require a lot of energy like wind resistance like the rubber tires resistance like the internal mechanical resistance of the car all those mechanical parts they they move and and and they use energy and that the same principle applies for braking so if you if you wouldn't break the car yourself there are other forces that break the car which as i said wind resistance rubber tires the rolling resistance of the rubber tires the internal resistance and so on so when accelerating you need more power uh to accelerate the car then you would need for just move the weight of the vehicle whereas when braking you produce less power than you would produce when converting the kinetic energy into electric energy so that means overall we are far away from those 80 percent plus minus that are potentially possible to regenerate i have done a lot of tests especially for my german channel and those videos will be translated to english and put on this channel over the next couple of weeks so i've done a lot of tests there and under the best circumstances with the best possible car with the most efficient drivetrain and the most efficient driving style with a driver who knows what he's doing the maximum you can get in traffic is around 50 percent that's maximum in we know from tests from my company and tests that it i did myself in city traffic you only get back roughly between 25 and 45 percent of the energy that you have used in the first place so you never get back what you have invested and those tests were made with pure electric vehicles which have big strong electric motors which regenerate much more than those small electric motors we have we normally find in hybrids so what does this mean for us well just avoid braking try to keep the car in motion try to look ahead or eat the road i'll show you here a video i've done with the ford cougar full hybrid you see here the traffic lights ahead of me are red so i already stopped the acceleration process and approached the traffic lights rather slow if you if you look at the cars on the left they are much faster than they need to brake you see all the brake lights they need to almost come to a full stop and i just keep the car in motion and i pass them with 30 kilometers an hour whereas they all come to a stop and need to accelerate and therefore need much more energy so always try to read the road ahead of you try to anticipate what is what is happening and in general try to avoid a change in speed which is the most efficient way of trying just keep the speed as steady as possible tip number three gentle acceleration hybrids work in different ways toyotas and forwards work different to hondas different to logos or volkswagens so there are slight differences in the technical explanation however in general we can say that accelerating from a standstill the car works like an ev and as long as the hybrid works in ev mode the use of energy is very efficient as we know that electric motors are are much more efficient than combustion engines roughly by factional three and with most hybrids as we've said before the power output is limited if you accelerate hard or harder then the electric motor would allow or is able to deliver the combustion engine kicks in and then you are you are in the less efficient mode of driving to avoid that it makes sense to allow the electric motor to do the work therefore not using too much power which exceeds the power of the electric motor and let's be honest in regular traffic in cities of a traffic light or out of a turn how often do you really need to accelerate hard once the stored energy in the battery is used then the combustion engine will kick anyway but the later that happens better for the efficiency i'll show you a short clip of my trip with the toyota chr you see we stop here at the traffic light 63.6 kilometers is on the odometer and now we accelerate and i'm driving just behind the car in front of me i'm not a blockage to the cars behind me here we here we turn left we have to accelerate there's roundabout we have to stop and now the combustion engine kicks in so it was around 700 meters that we were going in pure electric mode tip number four playing with the road this might sound a bit strange so what do i mean by that to illustrate that let's look at a roller coaster how does it work well the cars are pulled up to the highest point and then they are let loose and they make the whole way to the end only with gravity and kinetic energy and when having changes of the gradient on the road we can do the same if we draft downhill followed by a flat section or another ascend uh try to build up some momentum that you can take into this next section and therefore reduce the amount of energy in order to keep the speed or that you use when you have to go uphill if you're going up if the hill isn't very long and you know it will flatten soon or even turn into a descent after the top then try to reduce the speed a little bit when you're going up because once it flattens it's much more efficient to accelerate then or if it goes down let gravity do its job and the car will accelerate by magic ah no gravity so always try to to make use of the off the road of the change of gradient and and and and just follow the flow of the road i'll show you a video here of my trip with the toyota yaris cross is here we're going downhill a little bit and i'm building up some momentum now it turns into an apple section and this i'm reducing the speed you see here to 46 and once it flattens then i'm re-accelerating but this is not only restricted to hilly terrain it's also in-city traffic when you're going over a bridge or through an underpass especially with hybrids this can be very effective as you have the opportunity to decide in which mode the car operates i'll show you a video here of the of my trip with the toyota rav4 we are in city traffic we're not going up the bridge and so before i reach the top of the bridge i lift the accelerator a little bit and therefore initiate the electric motor to take over the combustion engine switches off as it flattens and turns into a descent the amount of power needed is reduced and further on i even charge the batteries a little bit as otherwise the speed would go up too much with some cars you can even press a button which enforces the ev mode as long as there is enough juice in the battery [Music] generally make sure that the battery is as empty as possible before you start the descent in order to allow it to store the regenerative energy as much as possible tip number five think about what car you need this might be a little bit controversial if you already own a hybrid that's probably not for you but if you consider getting one then that's something to think about make sure a hybrid suits the profile of your daily commute or ride if your daily ride contains a descent with more than 150 to 200 or 500 600 feet of descent in one piece then the battery probably won't be able to store all the energy produced during the braking the problem is on the way up you carry additional weight the electric motor the battery but on the way down you get back some energy that is stored and you can use later on however if the descent isn't long enough you cannot store all the amount of energy potentially produced and therefore you waste the energy and the friction breaks are used i show you here a clip of my right on the eco fargo channel with the renault clio it's a full hybrid so you see on the left here the the state of charge of the battery we are not just above 50 percent and [Music] i'm even just keeping the speed or slowly reducing the speed from 54 to okay it's 48 now and the charge bar is already almost fully down and the battery on the left is charged slowly are breaking a bit now because there is a left turn and you see here the charge bar is already at 100 percent and that means i'm using the friction brakes this is what i said earlier and now it's going further down and the state of charge is already up at the penultimate section here i'm i'm breaking you see me going around this turn and state of charge is a hundred percent so the the battery is full this means then when i'm braking now firstly i probably cannot brake with the electric motor as there is nowhere the electric energy can go you see here i am on the brakes reducing the speed but the charge indicator isn't moving so if you have a a longer descent on your daily commute then it might be worth thinking about getting a plug-in hybrid because they have bigger batteries and can store more energy or even a full ev so those were my five tips of how to drive full hybrids really efficiently if you want to see more of my content and all the tests i'm doing then feel free to subscribe this channel over here and if you hit the notification bell you won't miss any new video thanks for watching take care and see you next

Channel: Ecodriver

Views: 36,446

Keywords: economy, save money, HEV, FHEV, full, full-hybrid, good, mileage, improve economy, better mileage, increase mileage, how to drive hybrids economically, eco-driving, do hybrids save fuel?, how do I save on fuel, how to drive more efficiently, how to save fuel, how to get max mpg, how to increase mileage, how to reduce fuel consumption, how to save money on fuel, how to get best mpg, how to get better mpg, use less fuel, how to save fuel on hybrid car

Id: kEv-3OJg6sQ

Length: 16min 23sec (983 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 22 2021