Driving advice

[Rustybolts]

We just acquired an Outlander PHEV a few weeks ago. 1800km on it now and 3 tanks of gas. We have be letting the vehicle do the thinking so far. Fuel consumption is higher than expected. We switched from a full electric Kia to this vehicle.
We have a 50 km round trip drive each day. 25 km to work with a fairly steady drop in elevation of about 900 feet on the way in. One stretch about 8 km with speed limit of 80 kmh, otherwise 50-60 kmh. No charging available at the job. Temperatures from -5 to -20

Any thoughts on an ideal driving mode pattern?
Thanks,

 

[greendwarf]

When you say 3 tanks of gas - do you mean 3 used or 3 fills i.e. 2 actually used? Also, with sub zero temps, presumably you are using the heater from the battery, so journey time will be more important than distance.

Finally are you coasting and/or having to brake on the drop? - of course anything you gain will have to be paid back with interest on the return.

 

[michael8554]

Does your car have electric heating, or like mine, you have to use hot water from the ICE?

If electric heating, that will start to deplete the charge from the start, so I would guess that with a B regen setting that gets you down that 900m drop at a steady speed, you could get to work nearly all on electric drive?

If ICE heating, the charge on the downhill Isn't reducing much, so perhaps use SAVE, and use the charge on the return journey - hard to know what's best in this case.

 

[jaapv]

Your present temperature level is not very conductive to getting the best fuel economy out of the car. It will do much better in summer. I doubt whether controlling the pattern manually will bring much of an improvement.

 

[greendwarf]

If the OP is using the ICE for heating like ours, then it is quite an old car and the battery is unlikely to be able to give much better then 20 miles, even at higher temps. :idea:

 

[Rustybolts]

We have started driving in EV mode on the way to work (downhill), It seems to be better but the weather has been warming so it is really hard to judge. It is a 2019 so I assume it is electric heat but don't really know.