How To Drive A PHEV Properly (Plug-In Hybrid - High MPG)

hi guys i'm evm welcome back now i want to talk about fevs in this one or plug-in hybrid electric vehicles the vast majority of people i talk to that own one always come back and say i don't get the mpg the manufacturer says i should now i know there's many many variables and it's not a clear-cut black-and-white situation but for me ultimately it's because most people not everyone most people don't use it properly they don't utilize the plug-in hybridness that they've got at their disposable a lot of them don't even plug it in uh so that's what this video is about basically i've got all of the fev i've got a typical daily commute for me which is about it's about 40 miles and uh that's you know that's above the range of the battery so i'm effectively going to show you what you should do or what you can do to get the most out of your car basically if you own a fev you will get hopefully the mpg that the manufacturer states you should get now don't get me wrong it's pretty simple and straightforward is this it's not hypermiling or anything boring like that it's just pressing a few buttons telling the car what to do and when and ultimately getting high mpg which is ultimately what the fed is about if you've got a fever and you do lots and lots of motorway miles it's not the right car for you ultimately if you've got a fev and you do want to get the most out of it i.e it's not a company car then uh that's what this is for so uh yeah and enjoy it okay now my commute today is probably going to be about 40 odd miles i really should have looked at it before it sets off but i've got a good commute i've got a commute that is above the range of the car that was the whole point of doing it today normally i wouldn't have done it literally the day after this car was dropped off because this is the first time i've driven it i'm unfamiliar with the car completely and i couldn't set up the preconditioning for the cabin heater either and those are things which are very very good to do when you want to basically eke out the best mpg you can precondition in the cabin if if you're unfamiliar that basically means that you turn the heater on or you schedule the heater to come on before you set off so you get into a nice toasty warm car which is good for the driver but it's also good for the battery because a lot of energy is used to heat a car up far less than uh the maintaining that temperature so if i tell this car to preheat before i set off whilst it's still plugged into my house then the majority of that energy will come from the house because the car will pump out heat it will use a bit of the energy from the batteries obviously the engine's not running because you're not in the car so you're effectively using your house's energy to heat the cabin up and then all the car has to do when you get inside is maintain the temperature now because i know that the commute i'm doing today the journeys so we're doing several um will be a lot more than the range of the car i reckon i'm doing on a 40-yard miles it's hard to know because i'll be going to a few unknown places that i haven't received yet so i'll be doing let's say i'm doing 40 odd miles the car says it's got 27 miles of range uh so i want to to an extent i don't want to be really anal with this we're not hyper-violent as i said we're not trying to drive really economically what i want to do is pick my battles as it were and choose when i want the car to run on full electric you can leave the car in you know in its eco mud and let it choose but sometimes it it it doesn't know what we know does it can't predict or you're about to come into traffic so what i tend to do is effectively as i have already set off in full electric mode it's the first thing i do when i got in the car pour it in full electric mode that way i'm driving and i'm not using anything yet when i get to what would be an efficient road like uh i know sweeping country roads where you're not going to be stopping i'll i'll put in the normal uh i'll let the car decide effectively i'll put in hybrid mode rather than full electric mode right now i'm going through this village and i'm stuck in stop start traffic i absolutely want this to be in full electric mode which the car would probably pick for me but i want to make sure that happens so i'm in for electric mode in traffic when i get onto the uh dual carriageway in a couple of minutes i will be putting it back into full hybrid mode and letting the car do whatever it wants to do in terms of engaging the engine or not because i know i cannot do this entire journey on full electric so therefore i have to use some petrol clearly if you're doing a i know 15 mile round trip today then you put it in full electric when you set off and leave it that way because you've got more range in your battery than you're going on you you will not use a drop of fuel it really is kind of basic isn't if you think about it electric is extremely cheap it's about a tenth of the cost to me when i charge at home and that's a big thing if you can charge at home this video is clearly aimed at those who have bought a plug-in hybrid and can charge it so if you could charge at home using electric as much as possible is key to this entire test to this entire video the whole point of it is to use as much electric as possible if you want to make it really simple might not be the most efficient thing to do put it in full electric mode every morning use the whole battery as much as you can and then if you go above your range of your car it will just end up kicking the petrol engine in but at least you've used the full battery arriving home with half a battery is ridiculous because you've burnt fuel for no reason so that's the whole point of this exercise so i'm about to go back on the bypass now so i've put the car back into hybrid mode because i want to control what the car does because i know what i'm doing today the car doesn't quite a few people will be watching this going well duh yeah kind of figure that one out use electric as much as possible that's not difficult to to know but as i said earlier so many people have a fev that i've spoken to online or in person don't even plug it in that's the first lesson isn't it plug the car in it's a plug-in hybrid if you don't plug it in it's just a petrol car i know we're gonna get a lot of people who say well i gotta give one as a company car i don't pay my fuel i can't give her monkeys well i can't help that this is aimed at people who actually care about how much they pay on fuel and how much um miles per gallon they're getting so this is all about miles per gallon if you don't care about that then it doesn't really matter does it i suppose right now i'm coming up to a roundabout after the end of this dual carriageway so i'm putting energy back in the battery i'm using regenerative braking now most people by now will probably be familiar with at least what it is but if you're not effectively that means that rather than in a traditional non-hybrid or electric car you would have brakes that basically turn that forward momentum that kinetic energy into heat by the brake disc doing that on the pad it basically slows you down with friction with regenerative braking which is a word i sometimes can't say it seems what happens then is that the the electric motor effectively turns into a generator think of it like a generator on a wind turbine so the car's momentum will turn that generator and turn it into electricity so you're getting fuel back in the car every time you slow down so this is why hybrids are a lot more efficient than just a petrol only car because it's got that recuperation which a traditional car will obviously cannot ever possibly have i should point out that you will always use a lot more energy getting to speed than it will recuperate right now back in stuck in traffic full electric mode thank you very much now the car probably would have been if electric mode at this speed anyway but i want to make sure it is by doing it myself about to enter another dual carriageway so back into hybrid mode as i said you don't really have to do this if you can't be bothered doing it every single time you know it might get a little boring but that's what this exercise is about so far my consumption is 86.7 miles per gallon i've got 24 miles of range left and i have done eight miles of the journey i should point out that some plug-in hybrids will uh if you use the sat-nav will predict where it should use it and where it shouldn't so this will you know the car will effectively do what i'm just telling you to do but what the car won't know even if i use the sat nav is that i'm doing multiple trips for work today i'm not just going to work and then driving back so uh yeah only a person sometimes can really truly figure out what's best as soon as i come off this dual carriageway i'm pretty much on normal uh 30 mile roads for the rest of the journey so full electric after that that's the point so right now i'm on the dual carriageway i'm doing the speed limit which is 50 right now and the engine is driving me forward according to the car that has decided that that's the most efficient use of my fuel i'm just sat here at 50 not accelerating or anything like that um so rather than deplete the battery on this road that the petrol engine can run efficiently on i'm going to save it for the for the slower bits now when it comes to miles per gallon and things like this you have to pick the right car a plug-in hybrid is brilliant for normal day-to-day driving for commuting for picking the kids up from school from going to the shops from what traditionally the majority of journeys probably are there's someone that lives very near me who's got a plug-in hybrid and they're fully admitted they barely plug it in even though they do have a charger and they're just getting in drive they never fiddle with any of the settings they put in ecore sport or something like that but they'll never force it in full electric mode so the amount of times they'll go to the shops and back and use some petrol because obviously the car will do its own thing to a point it's just basically wasting money as a yorkshire man i find that perplexing i really do i admit it's not the most exciting video i've ever done how to get more miles per gallon there's real more runs around in there i'm doing the school run i'm going to park there and i don't care because i've got to drop little johnny off right i'm here at my first place let's see what i've got so i did 17 miles on this particular leg and so far i'm on 131 miles per gallon obviously i've used some battery on that one i've got 18 miles of range left on the battery which in a percentage term is still not familiar with this guy here we go i've got 61 percent left 5.2 miles per kilowatt hour all right well get some work done i suppose oh the car has just turned the engine on i have got one percent left on the battery basically i've used all the battery i'm probably about because i haven't gone the way that the sat nav suggested uh i don't know four or five miles oh hello four or five miles away um over country roads so i think the fact that i've been going uphill a lot has probably depleted a lot of it there um so yeah i've got a bit of downhill action coming on now uh batteries up to three percent already so i think uh once i get to the top of uh of the the moors if you like it's all downhill to my house from that point i should be able to uh go back into full ev mode we'll just have to see um so yeah i'm the engine's kicking in now i'm using fuel no it's ruining my mpg and it feels strange because my foot has a slight vibration to it now because the you know the petrol engine is there and it hasn't been there for the past 45 minutes ish what can i do for you that's tight that's tight that's tight what sorry spelling is not supported hey okay i am home and that that that climb over the mars the engine kicked in i could see my miles per gallon plummet if i'd have just left on a 100 battery instead of 92 percent i better go to the top of that hill or almost to it uh okay i have done 39 miles today uh two hours 27 it's taking me to 39 miles see they're 39 miles for current journey 155 miles per gallon that's just tripped down from 4.9 to 5 miles per kilowatt hour in terms of electric consumption so what have we learned from this little jaunt well by utilizing the battery in fact what did i have i've got four percent battery left and that's only because the last bit to my house was downhill i'd i've used all electric and as i said if i'd just had a full charge oh i could i reckon i'd have got close to 200 miles per gallon but i don't think 155 miles per gallon is bad for a it's a skoda superb so it's a big car um and yeah all i've changed is effectively making sure i've used all the electric so what i want you to take away from this particular video if you have a fev and you're not using it properly anyway obviously plug it in for the love of god plug it in presumably got a plug-in hybrid because of that company carricide and use your electricity all of it on each journey right okay thanks for watching guys uh subscribe if you like this video in fact just subscribe anyway even if you didn't like it because that's the only thing manufacturers pay attention to and i'll get more cars like this hopefully so yes thank you for watching and i'll see you soon

Channel: Electric Vehicle Man

Views: 228,812

Keywords: Nissan, Leaf, Electric, Cars, Vehicles, Zoe, Tesla, phev, plugin hybrid, plug in hybrid, plug-in hybrid, P.H.E.V., mpg hybrid, how to drive a hybrid, driving a hybrid

Id: e8QToP7oMro

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020