The returning home of a trip only.That converts to 471 MPG

After owning a plug-in Hybrid electric vehicle for just under 18 months I have discovered some techniques that allow me to get the best possible fuel economy.

Of course the first thing is to use it on electric only as often as possible, because electricity is a lot cheaper than petrol.

The next thing is to use our home charger as often as possible. We have a routine where we plug in the car as soon as we arrive back home.

Because our EHEV only has a 63 kilometer range on petrol only when the electric battery goes flat it will automatically switch over to automatic (hybrid) mode. When we first got the car I would always drive the car initially on electric mode until it switched over itself.

However if the trip we were doing was longer than 63 kilometres, I have since discovered that is not the most economical way to run the car

Electric motors are very good at getting the car moving because they have their maximum torque at zero RPM. Petrol engines use the most fuel getting cars moving and going through gears and relatively little fuel keeping it moving at a constant speed.

So on motorways and highways where speed is relatively constant, it is better to use the petrol engine when the overall trip is more than the range of the electric engine.

On outward bound journeys we drive on electric only until we get to a motorway or highway and then switch over to Petrol.

When we are returning home I always have Google maps showing me how far we are from home and when we are within the shown remaining range of the electric engine we switch to electric only.

When in Auto mode and going down long hills I switch the battery level control to high. That way the inertia of the car, basically rolling downhill, puts more power back into the battery. It is better than regenerative breaking.

I try to use one pedal driving as often as possible. That is back of on the accelerator and use the cars regenerative breaking to slow down rather than putting on the brakes. With quite a bit of practice I find I only need to put the brakes on when I come to a full stop.