True mpg 1.8 Corolla hybrid 16 inch wheels

[bewA]

Just filled up mine today and I'm getting a calculated 61mpg, the car said 63mpg which compared to my old car 42mpg is awesome!

I won't bother doing proper calculated mpg, I'll just stick to what the car says, I don't want to obsess over it too much 😂

[TonyHSD]

60+ mpg is more than great efficiency, I usually calculate very often the true fuel consumption for various reasons and when compared to the dash readings it’s almost identical .  

[bewA]

2 minutes ago, TonyHSD said:

60+ mpg is more than great efficiency, I usually calculate very often the true fuel consumption for various reasons and when compared to the dash readings it’s almost identical .

Yea it's probably good to do once in a while just as a sanity check 🙂

my next "acid" test for me is how many times in a month i'll fill up,  my old car would be a fill up 3-4 times a month, i'm hoping 2-3 times fingers crossed! 🙂

[AndrueC]

12 hours ago, TonyHSD said:

60+ mpg is more than great efficiency, I usually calculate very often the true fuel consumption for various reasons and when compared to the dash readings it’s almost identical .  

Mine hasn't been too far out on my commuting but it was a long way out on a long journey I did a month after I got it. I should be making another long journey with it soon so will be interesting to see what it says.

[TonyHSD]

Don’t forget to reset readings before you start the long journey, I noticed sometimes the dash readings doesn’t change very accurately when driving conditions has been changed and manual reset with buttons helps get more realistic numbers. 

[Cbatoday]

310 miles covered on £23.16 and 17.98 litres

Average mpg 79.2 

 

Have now covered a total of 2318 miles

 

= 

[Clipper99]

I am absolutely amazed at the true MPG of my 2020 Corolla Hybrid (Canada). My 3rd tank today yielded 60.92 mpg. It was 52.5 mpg at my last fill. This week I was commuting for 4 days to my 2nd job which is a 90km Highway round-trip, mostly flat. I love this car!!!!!! 

[AndrueC]

442 miles, 33 litres. 60.8 mpg. Not bad for a big tyre Corolla. Very good figures for commuting. Dash showed 64.1 so continuing to be optimistic by over 5%.

I drove this tank almost exclusively using the eco gauge and trying to keep the bar out of 'PWR'. It seems to have made a slight difference. I'm still unclear what the blue bar below the green line indicates. The manual seems to imply that it's where you'd get best economy but since that often means accelerating harder when trying to maintain speed it doesn't seem to be very useful.

This tank I'm going back to my normal 'brisk' acceleration to see what difference it really makes.

[Cbatoday]

Are people who are getting less than 70 mpg based in northern America and that would account for for smaller gallon over the pond

[AndrueC]

4 hours ago, Cbatoday said:

Are people who are getting less than 70 mpg based in northern America and that would account for for smaller gallon over the pond

I'm not. I'm in the UK. I think it has more to do with terrain, wheel size and nature of the journey. Most of my driving is either at a steady 50mph (with some inclines) or 30mph urban. The 50mph sections are far and away the majority (10 miles of my 12 mile commute is open road). Although the hybrid system can help a bit with that by optimising engine RPMs it seems to spend almost all that time charging the Battery. Given the losses incurred in doing that it's far from ideal. I am seeing a definite benefit from the HSD system but a car that spends most of its time cruising at 50mph over fairly flat terrain just isn't what a hybrid system is designed for.

The unknown factor is going to be the driver. I'm an efficient driver by nature so I think I'm only seeing 10% improvement over my last ICE car. However a less efficient (ie; more normal) driver might see a bigger difference. I doubt they'd see better mpg than me over the same journeys but they might be more impressed when considering their previous vehicle.

I would say that 60 mpg over a mostly open road commute of 12 miles is very good for a petrol car. But ultimately urban driving is where the HSD shines and that's because pootling around at 30 mph takes less energy and the HSD helps minimise the waste which would otherwise pull the average fuel consumption up.

[AndrueC]

For what it's worth this is what I've observed on my commute:

Going to work: Battery is typically at 50% when started. I can usually back the car out of the garage and drive to the end of my road without waking the engine. Pulling out of my side road onto the main road through the estate wakes the engine up. Once or twice as an experiment I've found that I can activate EV mode in the garage and then get to the main road out of town but mostly it just refuses. For the next ten miles the Battery is being charged. There are a couple of short sections where the ICE will switch off without prompting and several where I can force it on for longer. There's also a village that I can drive through on electric (not EV mode, just the ICE choosing to stay off). As I approach my destination there's a steep section of descending dual carriageway and I typically go down the last half a mile with my foot off or feathering the accelerator and charging the Battery. At the bottom the battery will usually be one or two bars short of full. From there I can drive most of the 2 miles to my office on electric only aside from pulling away from a couple of roundabouts.

Going home: Battery is typically at 30%. It'll get me out of the office park on electric but for the next half a mile the ICE will be on. On a warm day I can usually drop into electric for most of the last mile or so, again apart from roundabouts. Then the climb up the dual carriageway requires me to use the battery in order to avoid holding other traffic up. There's a quarter of a mile slightly downhill at 50 which the car chooses to do on electric. Then the last mile approaching my town is downhill which I can mostly do foot off the accelerator charging the battery.

At no point on my commute have I ever seen the battery 'idle'. It's always either helping power the car or receiving charge. It'd be interesting to know the difference in fuel consumption on the 50 mph stretch compared to my last car. My last car was a Honda Jazz CVT and its engine could switch between Atkinson cycle below about 2,500 rpm and Otto cycle above that. At 50mph it was in Atkinson mode. Now the Jazz is not as efficient aerodynamically but it only has a 1.3 litre engine and Honda do make good engines. So I bet there's not a lot of difference between the two along that stretch.

There'll be more of a difference in the urban sections but the Jazz had idle stop and I became very good at making use of it. So really I suspect the difference between the two can only come from aerodynamics and the moments when the Corolla is driving at low speed on electric when the Jazz would be on ICE at low rpms.

The Jazz at this time of year would return around 55 mpg. The Corolla is returning around 60 mpg.

[Cjohnston1982]

I’ve noticed that the 2.0 engine rarely charges the Battery though regen braking is quite quick at recharging. Have other people found this? I can spend half an hour on the motorway and the Battery doesn’t charge at all

[AndrueC]

2 hours ago, Cjohnston1982 said:

I’ve noticed that the 2.0 engine rarely charges the battery though regen braking is quite quick at recharging. Have other people found this? I can spend half an hour on the motorway and the battery doesn’t charge at all

Oh on a long enough journey my 1.8 will stop, or at least charge intermittently, clearly just topping up the Battery now and again. I reckon that's why on long journeys despite a higher average speed I can get better fuel consumption (how much better remains to be seen, although if the dash wasn't completely lying last time then 70 mpg seems possible). The issue I face is that on my 12 mile commute the Battery never gets to fully charged, or whatever you call the point where the ECU no longer sees a need to charge it. The car is keeping the Battery in its usable range but my assumption is that there is this constant need to charge which, when coupled with the losses involved, is probably part of the reason why my fuel consumption is a bit so-so.

I know the 1.8 can drive at 50 mph with the ICE doing 1,500 rpm. However on my commute mine runs at 2,000. It's continually doing more work than is required to move the car and the energy flow screen shows the ICE charging the battery.

60 mpg is still a good figure so the HSD is helping but I think it's also clear that as I suspected when considering buying a hybrid that my typical journey just isn't what hybrid systems are designed to handle. It's probably a testament to Toyota that the HSD is making the difference it does despite that.

[Cjohnston1982]

Thanks for the reply AndrueC. I had a Prius and Auris before and both of them would charge the Battery on a motorway to two bars below full which is fine. The 2.0 however never appears to charge it at all, even after an hour of motorway work.  Is this unusual?

My MPG is around 50-60 which seems ok but it’s seems to work a lot different to the 1.8 Prius and Auris

[AndrueC]

1 hour ago, Cjohnston1982 said:

Thanks for the reply AndrueC. I had a Prius and Auris before and both of them would charge the battery on a motorway to two bars below full which is fine. The 2.0 however never appears to charge it at all, even after an hour of motorway work.  Is this unusual?

My MPG is around 50-60 which seems ok but it’s seems to work a lot different to the 1.8 Prius and Auris

Oh, I see. I thought you meant yours was fully charged and didn't need charging.

No, mine definitely charges on the motorway. After half an hour or so on the motorway my Battery will be back at two bars short of full and it's at that point that the revs drop. The car has clearly got the Battery where it wants it and only needs to top it up occasionally if it uses it, as opposed to my commute where it seems it's never happy.

There isn't much the electric system can do to help on a motorway but I typically cruise at 60 mph and the electric system is still working. On gentle up slopes it allows the car to maintain the same rpm and on down slopes it sometimes goes to EV mode. On flat sections it sometimes seems to hunt a bit, shuffling power around as if it's not quite sure what's best.

I haven't driven mine much at 70 mph so I don't know if the HSD can do anything meaningful at those speeds. But even if the HSD is effectively hibernating at high speed I'd still expect it to charge the Battery up to its preferred state.

 

[Cjohnston1982]

Yes mine acts like you explained except it doesn’t charge on the motorway at all. Maybe the 2.0 is different, anyone? 

[Zurbaran]

On 8/10/2019 at 10:20 PM, Cjohnston1982 said:

Yes mine acts like you explained except it doesn’t charge on the motorway at all. Maybe the 2.0 is different, anyone? 

I’m thinking of ordering one with this engine and from doing research the engine is completely new and the Battery is lithium ion where as the 1.8 is the older nickel hydrate. Benefits are that it charges quicker whilst also being able to discharge quicker. Think it may be lighter as well but not fully sure of that.

Did you test the 1.8 also? If so how does it compare? It was the only one I am able to test here and whilst I was impressed I’d need a bit more oomph as I’m coming from a Lexus GS450h.

Does anybody have any info on how using the cruise control affects mpg? Whilst using it in my short test it felt quite efficient compared to a lot of other cars I’ve used it in.

[AndrueC]

28 minutes ago, Zurbaran said:

Does anybody have any info on how using the cruise control affects mpg? Whilst using it in my short test it felt quite efficient compared to a lot of other cars I’ve used it in.

It's definitely a smoother system and I don't get the kind of overshoot and undershoot with hills that I used to with my previous cars. I've driven my commute on cruise control a lot of times now and it's very smooth. It will sometimes let the car toddle along at a couple of mph below what is set and I think that's an efficiency thing. It's in situations where I'd know to hold the accelerator down a bit longer because of a slight rise in the road but it gets 'caught out' and decides it's not worth expending the energy just for a couple of mph. Also on a couple of occasions it's chosen to use actual engine braking rather than let the speed go a couple of mph above the limit but it was only for half a second and most of the time it doesn't need to.

As for efficiency cost I think you'd be lucky to tell the difference. At the very most it might 5% but frankly I think normal variation due to weather and traffic conditions probably drowns out the CC cost. It's certainly a small enough 'cost' that the pleasure of letting something else deal with speed control makes it worth it 🙂

 

But FYI: My recent fuel economy figures have all been with little to no CC use. I'm intending to run with CC as much as possible on my next tank (September) so that'll be interesting.

[Cbatoday]

I find if I use cruise control the engine stays on most of the time

If I control the accelerator with my foot I can use the pulse and glide method and the engine is only used a lot less

[bewA]

5 hours ago, Cbatoday said:

I find if I use cruise control the engine stays on most of the time

If I control the accelerator with my foot I can use the pulse and glide method and the engine is only used a lot less

I would agree with that also.  I find that cruise control will most likely use using engine braking going downhill (for example) where as if i'm doing it i will break which puts the car into ev & charging.

[AndrueC]

3 hours ago, bewA said:

I find that cruise control will most likely use using engine braking going downhill (for example) where as if i'm doing it i will break which puts the car into ev & charging.

That's pretty rare for me but then it probably depends how steep the hill is and how fast you're travelling. Most of them around here are 50 or 70 limit and only moderate inclines. The steepest I can think of will allow the car to maintain 60 with the foot off the accelerator but only just and only for a couple of hundred metres. The only times I've seen CC use engine braking is if I engage it part way down a hill.

But this tank could be a very good fill. The dash is now showing 65.1 and that's with a third used up. Weather-wise we must be in the sweet spot here. Dry, warm but not so hot that the A/C is running flat out. Either that or it's because I've switched to showing the eco operation screen and have been avoiding entering the 'PWR' zone and occasionally using it to avoid the car leaving EV mode.

[Clipper99]

2020 Corolla 1.8 Hybrid (Canada)
 

Well, a bit of an update for me since my last post. My previous fill-up 10 days ago yielded 4.64 L/100 km or 60.93 MPG Imperial Gallons or 50.73 MPG US gallons

After 4 fill-ups since owning the vehicle, mileage has been steadily getting better with each tank. I attribute that to either engine break-in or more likely, I am getting much better at adapting to a driving style suited for this hybrid technology. I am obsessing while driving with trying to maximize the time spent in EV mode and I’ve gotten pretty good at it as evidenced by my latest fill-up today. I had a feeling it was going to be quite good based on the 3.5 L/100 km tank average the on-board computer was calculating but the system so far hasn’t been entirely accurate on the first 3 tanks.

Here’s my latest results:

3.43 L/100km or 82.29 MPG Imperial gallons or 68.82 MPG US gallons

i am absolutely blown away! There was a good mix of city and highway driving. I live in smaller town with mostly flat terrain and some hilly areas so I am lucky in that regard. Like I said, I believe most of this huge improvement is down to driving within the cars limits and walking that fine line between EV and ECO mode. Always trying to coast down hills or even just backing off on the throttle for a quick charge here-and-there. Extremely smooth on the throttle and anticipating traffic and obstacles. I can cruise at 80 kph for about 3km (maybe more but I’ve not done a serious measurement) in EV mode. Around town it is so easy to make my trips with around 30-50% distance spent in EV mode.

I am expecting these results to be fairly typical moving forwards. My fuel savings over my ‘98 4Runner is about 75% or an average of $288/month down to $72/month.

i use a fuel app called Road Trip on iOS for my calculations. Great little app with lots of stats.

So how am I doing? 🙂

 

[AndrueC]

Very good results there. That's about the best I've seen so far as well. Like you my milleage has been gradually improving with a definite bump obtained from using the eco monitor to avoid using the 'PWR' band and to keep the car in electric mode at least at low speed.

There's is still some debate about whether maximising Battery running is beneficial or not. I really wish I could find that forum thread again because there was a lot of technical information in it. Basically three or four people got involved in discussing whether we should encourage the car into Battery running at every opportunity or whether we should let the car decide. There's a school of thought (which I subscribe to) that says we should not force it, other than when we know that the ICE would be running at very low load (eg;downhill or entering built up area). The logic for this is that all the electricity stored in the Battery is there because petrol was burnt and that in all cases there are losses. Of particular note is that using the ICE to charge the battery, then using that charge to power the wheels results in more lost energy than using the ICE to power the wheels directly. It only makes sense to do that if while charging the engine runs at a more efficient load than it would otherwise and if the charge can subsequently be used to allow the ICE to run at a lower and better load.

One thought is that if the car could use electric power at a given moment then the ICE could probably be run at a higher and more efficient load to charge the batteries at the same time. By denying it that option the driver might be forcing the car to charge the battery at some future point when it is less efficient thus compounding the losses inherent in direct charging.

From what I remember of that thread no conclusion was reached. But the implication I took away from it (which I've read elsewhere) is that it probably doesn't make much difference. In my case I have noticed that forcing electric mode can impact the car's ability to use electric at low speed so I think in my case at least it's not a good idea.

[bewA]

I'm assuming when you say forcing you mean by using the EV mode button?

My driving style for my commute is typically in eco mode and i generally know that if i lift off the accelerator pedal either on anything other than an incline that will "trick" the car in to going into EV providing there is enough Battery for that, but either way the ECU is still dictating whether the ICE is required either due to charging of the Battery or because more power is needed to maintain or increase the speed.

Using cruise control the car will go in to EV mode but i would say it has a preference to go in to ICE going down hills to leverage engine braking to increase regen.

Saying all of this i don't think any of it is a problem it's just how the car works and i'm happy with it, i like to think we have a symbiotic relationship after the first 1000 miles 😄

[Clipper99]

21 minutes ago, bewA said:

I'm assuming when you say forcing you mean by using the EV mode button?.....

Like you I’m also taking my foot off the loud pedal which usually gets me into eco mode. I’ll also start like a granny from a stop as long as there’s no one behind me. I’m in no hurry to get anywhere these days, my need for speed is long behind me. 🤣