Aptosuser

Part of the fun of driving a hybrid -- at least for me -- is the challenge of maximizing mpg without slow-poking. (In my case that means observing all posted speed limits.) In this regard, my most challenging route is the couple of miles I drive every morning between our house and our health club. We live near the Pacific Ocean (Monterey Bay) and there's a 127 ft. difference in elevation between our house and the club, the club being lower than our house. But that understates the route's degree of mpg difficulty, because there are numerous rises as well as dips over those two miles. Over the first half mile, the route drops from 256 feet above sea level (ASL) to 158 ft. ASL. But in the next 3,400 linear feet it rises again to 210 ft. ASL. Then with still more dips followed by shallow rises and another dip, if falls to 77 ft. ASL, before rising quickly again to 123 ft. ASL. There are a few more downs and ups before I reach the club, which is 129 ft. ASL. The bottom line is that it's almost as tough to score decent mileage going "downhill" as it is on the uphill return trip. It also doesn't help that my RX 450h is cold when I start out.

Yesterday after clocking a disappointing 17 mpg on the "downhill" leg (I'd often done as well or better in my six-cylinder RAV4), I decided to try something new. I'd been resetting my average mpg daily so I could see how I was doing, and I was keeping one eye on the simple energy-flow schematic in the instrument-panel display while trying to stay light enough on the gas pedal to keep the car on battery power as much as I could. Some days I did OK and other days not so well. So this morning I called up the much more detailed the energy-flow diagram on the NAV screen and kept an eye on what was happening there, as well as on the road (a challenge in itself). This time, in addition to doing everything I could to keep the arrows going from the battery to the electric motor(s) and the wheels -- or back to the battery -- I monitored the flow to make sure that even when I had to give the car more gas, the electric motors were never out of play -- figuring that as long as the electric motor or motors were pitching in, my RX 450h would burn less gas than my lighter RAV4 did.

I was right. When I parked the car at the health club this morning, the average mpg (which had begun at zero in our driveway) was 20.5, a 17 percent improvement over the previous morning. Not only that, but I succeeded in maintaining this average on the uphill return trip..

This weekend, we're heading down to (coastal) L.A. where the terrain is pretty much flat. I've already hit 30 mpg on a road trip in the opposite direction, so I know what the car can do on the freeway. I'm very eager to see how it does, mpg-wise, in "flatland" urban traffic. And I have the comfort of knowing that stop-and-go driving on the nearly always congested 405 freeway won't hurt the RX 450's mileage performance! I find that I'm a much calmer driver in slow traffic, knowing that I'm not blowing so much money out the tailpipe. I love this car!

oohpapi44

iTrader: (1)

Throw it in EV mode during stop and go and that will help as well. The hybrid definitely changes your driving habits. I find that I don't 'enjoy' driving my modded GS as hard as I used to before for a number of reasons definitely linked to the RX (gas, softer ride, etc).

Congrats.

Aptosuser

Every time I've tried to put the car in EV mode, I get a message saying it's not available. Plus, I have trouble finding EV mode on the panel display. I was trying the other day -- pushing the button next to the one you use for toggling between menu functions -- and I couldn't get to the display menu with EV mode. What am I doing wrong?

oohpapi44

iTrader: (1)

Aahhh, looks like it's a feature they added in 2011, I just searched your owners manual and the words "EV Mode" do not exist. But yes, that would be the procedure to enact it.

Aptosuser

No, my RX has it, because I found it before. I'll have to go back to the owners manual to read up on how to get there. It's on the same display menu as eco mode.

oohpapi44

iTrader: (1)

ok, on mine, it's as simple as:

Push square button:
Toggle up or down to 'EV' mode
Push toggle switch.

Aptosuser

So I push the square button, toggle to the EV mode, push the toggle switch and no matter what, whether the car is stopped or moving at less than 25 mph, the car keeps telling me that the "EV mode is not available at this time." This, when the Energy Monitor display is telling me that the battery is almost fully charged. I can keep it on the battery myself by monitoring the monitor and being very judicious with the gas pedal, But not being able to use this mode to see if the car will do better than I can at low speeds on favorable terrain is frustrating. I can't figure out what, if anything, I'm doing wrong and owner's manual isn't much help. Could this be some kind of software glitch or something otherwise wrong? The car is certified and still has less than 17,000 miles on it.

oohpapi44

iTrader: (1)

From the Manual:

Aptosuser

I guess I didn't "drill down" deep enough into the manual. Anyway, it hardly seems worth the trouble.

oohpapi44

iTrader: (1)

Agreed, I didn't realize it was only a half mile until researching this for you. I thought I had exceeded 25mph when it kicked me out previously.

Learned something new.

falconer

OP, for me, I find the MPG is more meaningful from tank to tank. I was glued on the mpg meter as well as the tank average but the moment to moment changes were confusing. I love the graphic displsy on the nav screen though. It allows me to brag to my wife that I get better gas mileage than she does in our 2014!

Love Aptos BTW. We rent a house there every year, sometimes twice a year for a week.

Aptosuser

We just got back from our first extended road trip -- 796 miles to Orange County and back, via U.S. 101 and "the" 405. We averaged 29.4 mpg for the whole trip in mostly freeway driving and much of the time on cruise control, observing speed limits all the way (65 mpg except for one 70 mph stretch between King City and Paso Robles). Left with a full tank and gassed up twice -- at about a half-tank down each time. So we did a bit better than the EPA's 28 mpg highway estimate.