Long trip advice

[SimHo]

I know this has all been discussed before in various threads, but I wanted to try and draw the best advice together so I can finally (hopefully) get my head around long distance driving in the PHEV .

In a couple of weeks we are driving from Kent to visit my daughter in Edinburgh. We will be doing local city driving in Scotland along with a couple of day trips up into the highlands. We can't charge at my daughters flat.

We live close to the motorway network, so I thought we would start fully charged, let the battery reduce to 50% or so and then Save - using the remaining battery at the other end of the journey, or if we get stuck in traffic.

If possible I will switch off Save and use B0 to coast or regen to charge if there are places where it will help. I won't be using ecotricity chargers for obvious reasons.

I would like comments on the following:

Is it worth slowing down on the motorway (I understand to 65mph or so) near to Edinburgh and using Charge to top up to get a decent reserve for the city driving to come?

I have read that charge should be used when driving in mountains, but I am unclear whether the idea is to actually charge the batteries before you get to the hills, or whether you just have Charge on when climbing to provide extra oomph.

I assume that I should use Charge on the days out in the highlands in order to get some reserve for the hilly bits - especially if I have no charge at the start of the trip?

Or should I just let the car sort itself out?

Any help or comments appreciated.

 

[mjb]

I have read that charge should be used when driving in mountains, but I am unclear whether the idea is to actually charge the batteries before you get to the hills, or whether you just have Charge on when climbing to provide extra oomph.

From my experience, driving up a sustained incline, you'll lose SoC even in Charge mode, so the reason would be so that you have a battery reserve to assist with the climb. Climbing with an empty battery, you'll end up in reduced power mode. (hence the suggestion to start Charge mode 20mins before you begin climbing, to give the car a chance to gain some SoC before you get to the climb).

Note that I'm a new owner, so I may have some inaccuracies there that others will clear up I suspect

 

[greendwarf]

Is it worth slowing down on the motorway (I understand to 65mph or so) near to Edinburgh and using Charge to top up to get a decent reserve for the city driving to come?

I'd say yes, but as you will be burning more fuel to Charge then there is unlikely to be any difference in overall consumption - although in theory city driving with the ICE (esp. stop/start) is less efficient than building up the SoC at constant higher speed.

It really depends on your reason for wanting to drive on battery in urban areas. If to avoid local pollution or just that it is more comfortable at low speed, then definitely -Yes :mrgreen: