Learning how to drive my hybrid

[HeyBales]

Thank you for this. I‘m new to a lot of these terms and conditions so slowly gaining knowledge.
Can i ask you, do you use cruise control on the highway? I have not and winder if it helps in any way.

When on a road trip yes.
In which case I'll use Slippery mode, as it eases the response to get back to speed even more than Eco, if any is lost. Doesn't effect the AC though, but this is winter camping trips so... no AC.
But I don't have Adaptive CC.

In city highway I'll sometimes recall to use cruise if the time is right, but usually the traffic is such and trip is short, so it'll be worthless so I don't bother.
I also have no big hills - so no negative from cruise if used.

Cruise on the steep Ozark hills actually can get aggressive, but only talking brief moments of heavy power given and very low mpg.
I've tried manually - let speed increase more on down and hit the up faster, let the speed drop very slowly with power just a tad less and slightly better mpg than cruise would get.
But these are steep enough only a few seconds of difference - then back to high power/low mpg, and about max traction motor assisting.

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[Khain]

2026 Maverick XLT hybrid. Purchased it 8 days ago. Driving it around town and 2 trips to my cabin. Today was the first day, going home from my cabin (about 82 miles), that I felt I was beginning to get it.

It seems to be a lot about having a soft touch to both the accelerator and break. Am I right? Half the trip is highway and the other half is slower stop-and-go through small towns. I used normal mode today through the small towns and Eco mode on the highway. I achieved 51.5 mpg. I tried to keep it under 65 mph on the highway.

I figured, with today’s gas prices, I’m saving about $15 round-trip from my previous non-hybrid vehicle. Not earth shattering but interesting nonetheless. Free money is always good!

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[Darryl]

I have come to the conclusion that I would mostly drive as I normally would try to drive any vehicle for decent fuel economy. If I use eco mode it is mostly in City driving. But if it includes mostly highway driving, I was just leaving the normal. I do use the Eco coach to give me that little extra guidance. I could do more to squeeze the most MPG out of it. But it does well enough in my opinion even with just normal conservative driving. It's just as good as my old 2011 Focus on the highway and is much better than the focus in City driving. So I'm happy. And the people behind me are not upset with me either

 

[KO Stradivarius]

Turn on the EV Coach display to get a better sense of how the system is switching from the ICE to the EV battery to charging mode.

It seems to come on for breaking but i haven't seen it for anything else. Ill check my settings. Thank you.

You are describing the "Brake Coach" pop-up window that comes on temporarily after braking to a full stop.

The "EV Coach" is a steady screen that you can toggle to, same as the Trip 1, Trip 2, Tire Pressure, etc. If you keep this screen on you will see when you are driving Electric vs Hybrid (ICE), and how to keep the bars in the Electric brackets when driving (to optimize MPG) and within the brackets when braking (to optimize your regeneration %).

 

[KO Stradivarius]

Wonder how to get 40+ mpg? My '25 Lariat awd w/ tow pkg always shows @ 38.5 mpg. Retired & don't drive much more than to golf course & back; @ 7k miles / year. Not complaining but others do better. Should I use 91 vs 87, or something else?

Are you looking at the "Trip Summary" screen which pops up after you turn the vehicle off? That will tell you your MPG for your prior trip, so you can see if your new driving technique is better or not.

But if you are looking at the "Fuel Economy" screen, which is one of the screen options that you can toggle to such as Trip 1, Trip 2, Tire Pressure, etc, then that is a cumulative average MPG number for all of your trips combined. So unless you reset that screen often, it will be an average of thousands of miles and therefore it will take a very long time to see any significant change because there is so much data already used in calculating the average. Like if you got 38 mpg for 5,000 miles, and then you tried new methods like we're discussing here to improve your MPG over just a few hundred miles, then it won't change this number much until you did it for thousands more miles.

 

[MavGeek]

You are describing the "Brake Coach" pop-up window that comes on temporarily after braking to a full stop.

The "EV Coach" is a steady screen that you can toggle to, same as the Trip 1, Trip 2, Tire Pressure, etc. If you keep this screen on you will see when you are driving Electric vs Hybrid (ICE), and how to keep the bars in the Electric brackets when driving (to optimize MPG) and within the brackets when braking (to optimize your regeneration %).

Found it. Thanks for the help!

 

[Mavster Mechanic]

Found it. Thanks for the help!

Modes are fun to teach you a few things as a newbie. So experiment with them. After a while they matter less and less.

Above 60 mph just drive.
Below this, pay attention to how many minutes you can get your engine off.
On a 15 mile one hour city drive with lots of stoplights... My gas engine might run 9 or 10 minutes. 50 minutes or more of not burning any fuel.
Net result: 60 MPG for those 15 miles.

Coast with engine off as much as possible. Get engine to shut off by lifting foot off gas pedal. Don't back off gas pedal slowly. Get off the gas pedal completely as it's as if an off switch for the engine.

Hope that helps.

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