5 Tips how to drive Plug-In Hybrids more efficiently

hi everybody welcome to ec driver my name is helmut in this video i will give you five tips of how to drive plug-in hybrids or how to use plug-in hybrids the most in the most efficient way i have already done two other videos in this series the first one was about full hybrids and the second one was about electric vehicles you'll find the links to those videos in the description box below so let's talk about plug-in hybrids and let me get one thing clear at the beginning this is not a place to bash any type of vehicles if electric vehicles uh vehicles with combustion engine plug-in hybrids hybrids they all have their right to be there they all make sense in a different way and we are only talking about how to use them in the most efficient way so my five tips number one think about whether it's the right vehicle in the first place in some countries you get a bonus from the government when you buy a plug-in hybrid or you get a tax credit so a lot of people a lot of companies buy these cars or drive these cars without using them correctly and this has led or leads to a kind of a negative image things like or you hear things like um those cars go back after three years as leasing vehicles without the the charging cables even unpacked in the trunk and so on so um but that's not the point so we talk about how to use them correctly so firstly think about whether you can make best use of the technical opportunity those vehicles give you and this is charging do you have the opportunity to charge the vehicle regularly that's an indicator yes it might be the right vehicle this especially about the manufacturer or the model of the vehicle think about it whether you need a lot of heating when you live in southern california that's not the problem but for most other parts of the world a significant time of significant part of the year you have to heat the vehicle and some vehicles out there when you drive in ev mode and you turn the heating on then the engine the combustion engine starts running in order to produce the heat so think good about how the vehicle works most vehicles have an external heater have a dedicated heater which works with petrol but the combustion engine isn't running and therefore the external heater is more efficient or some get the the energy for the heating of the traction battery so inform yourself in advance otherwise you you might be surprised in a negative way if you have the chance to charge the vehicle then use the opportunity to preheat the car in most vehicles this is then done with the electricity out of the out of the block so if you have the opportunity to charge at home perfect if you don't have the opportunity to charge at home then maybe you have other opportunities like if you go shopping at the at the groceries there is a charger um if you look here in in germany austria lots of the big grocery chains they have charging stations at their parking lots and most of them are free so if you have no chance to charge the vehicle then it might not be the right choice for you with one exception and i i i want to state i'm not promoting not charging the vehicle i'm just saying if you have to cover along a descent regularly then it might make sense to go for a plug-in hybrid that because you can uh we can use all the regenerative energy produced on the descent to then go a certain distance without the combustion engine some people also say that plug-in hybrids don't make sense if you do longer trips if you are if you have long distances to go they don't make sense it depends for example i got my plug-in hybrid consciously i i i thought long and hard about it and if i'm going to customers i have to go either to switzerland to northern italy southern germany or more eastern parts of austria and in three of those four cases switzerland italy germany i have to go up climbs and then down on the other side and on the way back it's the same so for example when i come from from northern italy i come from the the brenda bus and this is 800 meters of drop in altitude and i gain about six to eight kilometers uh just by going down or the same when i come from switzerland uh i go over the through the outback tunnel and then i have i don't know 10 12 kilometers of descent and again another six eight kilometers of electric range and even if i wouldn't charge the battery i'm still going with uh six liters per hundred kilometers for a 2.3 ton seven seater suv with 300 horsepower or 300 plus horsepower on the on the combustion engine only and that shows that uh that even on long distances plug-in hybrids make sense if the conditions are right and in my case they are right and i'm surely not the only only person who have has has this kind of driving profile sure if you live in in plainland or in northern germany but there are no mountains or no no hills then yeah sure it probably doesn't make sense but in lots of areas this might make sense if you look at the at your daily commute a few of your trips what are you doing that irrespective of the charging aspect you benefit from the large battery and from the hybrid drivetrain tip number two and this is abc i'm lending this from your newland always pay charging whenever you have the chance try to run the car in ev mode as this is a much better use of energy than the combustion engine either you can charge at home or as i said before if you go shopping or you are somewhere when i i have a plug-in hybrid myself and when i go to to my customers and their stay in a hotel i choose the hotel uh after the opportunity to charge my vehicle so uh that at least the next day i have 40-50 kilometers of electric range and for me it doesn't make any difference whether i stay in this hotel or that hotel or i always ask my customers if they have a chance to charge the car somewhere or if there's a charging station nearby or i look it up myself so always try try to use the electric motor as much as possible tip number three gentle acceleration if you have seen my video about the faux hybrids this is basically the same reason i'm not talking about the physical aspect of accelerating if you're interested in this you can check out my video about the electric vehicles that's the link is down there um this is especially for hybrids and plug-in hybrids normally the electric motor is rather small there are exceptions newer plug-in hybrids like the toyota rav4 prime or the way or the new version of the volvo xc90 they have bigger electric motors they have bigger batteries so those vehicles are not really affected by that but this is about the the majority of the plug-in hybrids are there they have a small electric motor they have smaller batteries so the engine isn't that strong so if you're accelerating harshly then in most cases the combustion engine kicks in with some vehicles like my volvo uh if you if you are in pure mode if you're in ev mode and the electric and you and you press the accelerator hard then it stays in ev mode but with most other vehicles if you exceed the power of the electric motor then the combustion engine kicks in so therefore try to accelerate in a way that the electric motor can do the work if it goes goes uphill rather steeply or you're really accelerating hard or you have a you're towing something then probably will kick in sooner but as long as possible try to avoid the combustion engine to work as this is not as efficient as efficient as the electric motor as we have heard before tip number four gentle braking here same tip as with the full hybrids and it's basically the same reason as with the acceleration the the electric motor is not very strong most cases you're around 50 60 70 kilowatts and this is enough to move in city traffic to accelerate moderately just to drive normally the main job in braking is done by the electric motor so kinetic energy that's the energy that is stored in the movement of the car is transformed to electric energy which can be stored in the batteries that's great but the electric motor is as we have heard before not very strong in most cases and therefore you exceed the the regenerative capacity of the electric motor and keeping in mind that the average electric motor only produces around 80 percent of the power in region mode that it produces in the motor mode so when it drives the vehicle that means that we have even less power to break the vehicle then we have to accelerate it and this means that you are exceeding the regenerative capacity of the motor i'll show you here an example of my trip with the renault megane plug-in hybrid on the eco-driver loop and we are here on a descent and there is a hairpin turn ahead of us and i'm braking rather moderately not really hard and i'm already coming to the maximum of the charging scale you see here the this this bar goes to the very end and i'm even braking so and i'm breaking even a little bit more so that means that i'm already using the friction brakes to reduce the speed that means i cannot make full use of the potential regenerative energy that could be produced therefore try to brake gently especially from higher speeds you notice with electric motors or electric cars or hybrids accelerating from a standstill that's okay that's rather quick continuing the acceleration from 60 to 100 or 80 to 120 kilometers an hour that's not very powerful it's not very agile and the reason is the the torque with electric motors is rapidly decreasing with the number of ref the higher the electric motor rotates the lower the the torque gets and therefore the you just lose power you you have less power at higher refs and that means that you also have less power than braking from high rfs from higher speeds so on the motorway when you hit the brakes at 100 kilometers an hour uh i'm sure i haven't done it with this car but when you do it with your full hybrid or your plug-in hybrid you will see that you you will exceed the regenerative capacity really quickly and you're doing all the braking work by the friction brakes and the only form of energy this produces is heat so brake gently you probably missed my usual number four which is playing with the road this tip applies with plug-in hybrids as well but i restricted myself to five tips and if you're interested what i mean by playing with the road you can check out the full hybrid video where i explain this in further detail and tip number five the correct use of drive modes as you probably know in if you own a hybrid you know that you have different drive modes if i take my volvo it's pure it's pure electric it's hybrid there's an individual mode there's all-wheel drive and there's a sport mode so what i mean by correct use of drive modes is think about when you choose the f the form of energy you use at lower speeds in general try to use the electric drivetrain as much as possible at city speeds up to 50 60 kilometers an hour the ev mode is the more efficient way of moving the vehicle when the speed goes up then it probably makes sense to switch to the combustion engine um if you can cover the whole your whole trip the whole route with ev mode then do it even if you go faster and if you have the chance to charge afterwards that's perfect but i always try to use the different modes of direction where they make the most sense most plug-in hybrids have a feature in their satnav system the navigation system which calculates which mode to use to arrive at your destination with an empty battery it works rather well with one i have one slight issue with that i've tried it with my vulva and you have to you have to be in hybrid mode for this feature to be used and when i switch from hybrid to pure mode i have another three or three to five kilometers two to three miles of electric range and this additional electric range isn't used in hybrid mode so in this case of the volvo uh it doesn't make best possible use of the electric capacity and you you probably have to find out whether this is the case with with your plug-in hybrid and therefore if i know the road and i know the most roads i'm i'm doing then i decide myself which mode i'm using let me see one thing regarding the charge mode most plug-in hybrids can charge the battery while driving through the combustion engine you hear people probably say that's inefficient and that that's a crime against nature and against the environment and it doesn't make sense well um i'm not so sure about that because as we know combustion engines have a very low efficiency it ranges between 10 and 40 and if you charge the battery with uh the combustion engine in the plug-in hybrid then you're normally not producing more power out of the combustion engine what happens is the the point of the load is moved a little bit so you increase the load on the on the combustion engine and therefore increase the efficiency so the what you gain in electricity is not directly related to the additional energy you use in the combustion engine to produce this energy as the as the efficiency goes up and therefore um it's there are situations where it probably makes sense to [Music] uh to do this so if you have a if your battery is empty and you have 10 kilometers of city road at the end of your trip and you're on a motorway i would recommend to charge the engine and and then go in in ev mode in city traffic i have done a test with my volvo it's on my german channel and i will translate it in the next couple of weeks and put it on eco driver as well where i have compared the trip on my ecotravel loop that i have done in a hybrid mode with an empty battery and no charging and then i have done the same with charging to use the electric ddv mode in the last 17 kilometers in city traffic and difference was very small roughly six to eight percent so it might make sense and there's one more thing um one one follower asked me about the eco mode and that when he drives the eco mode in eco mode the consumption goes up the eco mode is is a setting on the vehicle which on its own has a certain effect but this effect can be diminished or even reversed into the negative means more consumption if you don't use the vehicle then in the right way in in my in my real life in business i see this with city buses if the gearbox is set to the eco mode or the the hyper eco mode or whatever it's called we often see that the consumption goes up why because the power is reduced the the gears are shifting a little bit earlier and this leads to the drivers pushing the pedal harder trying to accelerate longer in order to make up for the loss of power and if we transfer this to cars to hybrids or plug-in hybrids if you're in in eco mode you need to you need to switch your brain to eco mode as well if you try to drive the same way you did before in eco mode there is no effect and some drivers even subconsciously compensate the eco mode by just pushing the pedal harder and try to and use a higher percentage of the available power and then it might well be that the consumption goes up at the end let me give you some numbers on my volvo xc90 to show you what can be achieved when you use a plug-in hybrid correctly i've done almost 12 000 kilometers on my plug-in hybrid and so far the kilometer cost me seven cents the overall consumption on petrol is three point eight four liters per hundred kilometers and the electric consumption is 12.1 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers this is the effect of charging as much as possible whenever i'm whenever the car is parked either at my place i had a plug installed just when i got this vehicle so that i can charge it whenever the car is in the carriage wherever i am i try to charge the vehicle externally to make best use of the ev mode these are my five tips for driving plug-in hybrids more efficiently if you like what i'm doing then feel free to subscribe this channel and if you hit the notification bell you won't miss any new video thanks for watching take care and see you next time

Channel: Ecodriver

Views: 5,069

Keywords: better mileage, increase mileage, better mpg, reduce consumption, better fuel economy, save fuel, ecodriving, eco-driving, best mpg, drive properly, drive economically, drive a phev properly, drive a phev efficiently, drive a plug-in hybrid properly, drive a plug-in hybrid efficiently

Id: HaAxsPtz1YE

Length: 20min 38sec (1238 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 05 2022