Chuck Woolery
Member
I'm longing for the days when modifications to the electric portion of our hybrid system with larger batteries and/or larger electric motors becomes more popular as I'd really like to use more of the electric motor on my normal commute. Mostly just for the sake of using it. It bothers me as an Engineer that my boss's new hybrid Ferrari can drive on electric only mode up to 86 mph for 20ish miles.By average, I meant the overall average across city/highway, and different seasons. Right now my lifetime (albeit still early as I have <10k miles) is 21.6.
The reason I am thinking for 26 was that I believe that the electric motor's power output is specifically selected to be about the same as when the engine is running at low speed. (aka, looking at the dyna chart of ecoboost 3.5, it is outputting about the same power at around 1200-1400 rpm?) So with enough battery power, I'd imagine that the truck can be powered a lot more often by the electric motor alone.
Note I am not complaining but just want to see if there are ways to optimize.
Interestingly, I read about Maverick hybrid's spec: it only had a battery size of 1.1 kwh while at the same time its electric motor outputs 126 horsepower and 173 lb-ft of torque.
For reference I drive all rural roads to work, mixture of speeds (max 60-65mph depending on mood), and a handful of stop signs and get the mileage I reported. However I do keep the RPM's low and do all driving on normal mode. It does seem that the truck is monitoring my driving style and adjusts to maintain mileage as best as possible, for reference there's stretches of road I can keep it in electric only mode rather easily. It also rarely gets into boost unless I really hammer on it, even while towing. I do like that it's constantly learning to give only the power needed to get me moving for what I need to do, or maybe it's just all in my head.
With that said though, I also use my truck as a truck and tow things with it a fair amount. So my total lifetime "average" fuel economy is absolutely nothing to brag about, and worse when my kids borrow my truck.
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