So I’ve been looking at hybrid cars, and I’ve noticed that they do not get all that spectacular an improvement in gas mileage compared to standard gasoline powered cars that are designed for gas efficiency. For example, the Honda Fit has been getting 33 mpg consistently for most drivers, whereas most hybrids get just 43 mpg or less. Shouldn’t the cars get much greater mileage from being able to use batteries? Seems almost as if car manufacturers are not really trying with hybrids.
On the freeway a hybrid generally won’t get better mileage than a traditional car because its not using the electric motor and its effectively operating as a traditional car that’s carrying a crapload of batteries and an electric motor that aren’t carrying their own weight.
Hybrids really shine in stop and go driving where you use the electric motor to launch and recharge it when you brake. In slow moving bumper to bumper traffic you can go miles without even starting the engine.
There are different kinds of battery powered (or augmented) cars. Traditional hybrids, plug in hybrids with IC engines and pure electric cars.
A traditional hybrid works best in city traffic with lots of stop and go. A plug in hybrid may go 40-80 miles on a battery charge before the IC engine kicks on. For those, you will find more MPGequivalent, since electricity is cheap. I think the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas is about $0.80.
But that isn’t ‘better’ mileage, just different. A plug in hybrid may get 100mpg, but that is because a lot of energy comes from the battery charged on the grid, not from gasoline.
then design a better one.
look, the point of a hybrid car is two-fold: point 1) is to have a mechanism to capture and store as much energy from braking and coasting as possible which would otherwise be wasted, and 2) to use that energy to let the gas engine switch off when it’s not needed e.g. when the car is stopped or the car is plodding along at low speeds.
if you’re expecting a hybrid to get over 9000 mpg just because it’s a hybrid, well, then you’ll be sorely disappointed.
as an anecdote, at my last job we had a 2009 Ford Escape hybrid as an office pool car. The EPA sticker for it was 34 city/ 31 hwy. When I drove it (and I drove it a lot) I could regularly get 36-38 mpg. The standard 4-cyl Escape was rated at 20 city/ 28 hwy. The hybrid got substantially better economy than the standard.
As others seem to have suggested - I’m not sure what you are expecting. The hybrids aren’t using some new power source. Except for some new plug in versions - they are all powered by gasoline. The manufactures essentially use tricks - add a big battery - and electric motor - and recapture some energy that would have usually been wasted.
It is more analogous to methods that capture heat from waste water in your house. You wouldn’t really expect that to half your electric bill would you? In the case of the car you have the added weight of the battery and electric engine. Not sure what an apples to apples comparison would be, but most people think it’s amazing/great that I get ~50mpg in my Prius. I dont think it’s that impressive, but it’s kinda funny how in 2013 people still get in my car and ask me about having to plug it in and are surprised it doesn’t drive like a gocart.
I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet since I bought my 2005 Prius. I’m averaging about 47 mpg, mostly freeway miles.
This is much better than my 1999 Jeep Cherokee (19-20 mpg), and a little better than my 2002 Yamaha YZF-R1 (40-42 mpg).
Believe me, most people, even educated people, do not understand this.
When I started super-commuting (on a highway) to my new job almost 4 years ago, lots of people told me “you should get a hybrid!”
We have a 2006 Escape hybrid, and the point of buying it, for us, was to get better overall mileage than we did in our old Jeep Cherokee. We had to have a 4WD with good clearance in order to get to my in-laws’ house, and we don’t have the kind of money that buying a dedicated specialized vehicle would require, so it was pointless to compare the mileage with, say, a compact sedan or a 2WD hybrid. We drive it mostly in town, so our goal was to get a car with an MPG rating that compared favorably to the car we’d prefer to drive in town. The increase in mileage over the life of the vehicle is unlikely to justify the increased purchase price, but it makes us happier about having to drive a bigger car than we’d like around town.
I get about 55 in mine during the summer and about 45 during the winter.
You should get a diesel!
Seriously though few appreciate that different cars meet different needs better.
As to the op:
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Some hybrids are more hybrid than others. Some are not much more than a bit of regen braking and start stop instead of ideal.
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Keep in mind the amount of gas we are talking about. 33 mpg comes to 303 gallons over 10k. Increasing by 10 mpg to 43 mpg comes to 233 gallons over 10K miles, saving 70 gallons. Increasing by another 10 mpg to 53 saves only another 44 gallons over that 10K, for the same mpg increase.
Does braking “feel” different in a car using regenerative breaking?
Are you comparing the same size of car? The Fit is smaller than most hybrids.
Not especially. In my Prius I have a regenerative braking mode I can select with the gear selector. I use it the same as I would downshift in my other car and it feels the same. For regular braking with the pedal it works the same as any other car, except I look at my power meter and try to maximize charging.
I rented a Prius once and drove it for a week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, all city driving.
It got over 60mpg. I kept redoing the math thinking no freaking way, but it did in fact get it. On the way from and back to Milwaukee, all highway driving, it barely got 44mpg.
But man, that is a weird, irritating car to drive!
With the Prius, it isn’t just the hybrid system-- the entire car is built from the ground up with fuel economy in mind. It’s got that ugly but aerodynamic shape, lightweight components, low rolling resistance tires, etc. With other cars that have hybrid options, the savings are substantially less because the rest of the car is the same. Many of the hybrid option cars are also “performance” hybrids where the hybrid system enables better acceleration while keeping mileage close to the same.
I would argue that the Prius was a marketing success more than an engineering one. In the rest of the world, there’s plenty of conventional drivetrain cars that are also built for high fuel economy, but they cost more and perform worse than normal cheap cars and so Americans won’t buy them. The Prius appealed to gadget-lovers and just so happened to come out right as the green movement started getting trendy. Against all odds, the pokey little car turned into a status symbol. Prices have come down quite a lot, but when the Prius was first introduced it wasn’t a particularly cheap car-- they cost about twice as much as a comparable economy sedan at the time.
Mine is a 2005. I hear newer ones get better mileage. My typical trip is 5 miles to the freeway, then either 20 miles or 105 miles on the freeway, then the reverse of that trip. I typically set the cruise control at 72-74 mph. The best mileage is after I get into King County and the traffic starts slowing down. When traffic is ‘stop-and-creep’, mileage suffers. When it’s ‘slow-and-go’ is when mileage seems best. On the cruising segments, the econometer indicates an average of about 44 to 47 mpg. As I said, the whole trip typically averages 46-47 mpg by calculation. (Indicated mpg reads about 3% high.) Mileage is better in Summer, and when I obey all posted speed limits.
I like the shape. But then, I like aerodynamic things. 
The Prius doesn’t accelerate as fast as my Porsche did, but it’s not exactly a slouch. I happen to believe that best fuel economy is achieved when cruising speed is reached in a short amount of time. I haven’t bothered to break out the physics equations to prove it; I’m just going on a gut feeling. (Note that I like ‘brisk’ acceleration; not ‘maximum-performance’ acceleration.) I’m always getting stuck behind people who don’t understand that they should be up to freeway speed when they get on the freeway, even when they are driving cars that are supposed to be ‘fast’. It’s more how you drive than what you drive.
The SO finds the Prius very comfortable to drive – and she was pleasantly surprised when she filled the tank on her outing to Portland, compared to filling her Tacoma. But she’s ‘offended’ by a car that tells her what to do. I related the story elsewhere of how she failed to turn it off and it sat for two days, and then wouldn’t go when I needed it. She doesn’t like the ‘safety feature’ that prevents the driver or passenger from entering a phone number or address into the MFD when the car is moving. Since I can be a little aggressive in my driving, the traction control has annoyed me from time to time. (And one time in the snow, I could have gotten moving if only the car would have let the wheels spin a little.) The Jeep’s steering is heavy, and the seats get uncomfortable after a while. The MGB won’t run when it gets hot. One of my knees doesn’t bend as far as it should due to an old injury, so it’s a little cramped on the YZF-R1 – and my bum’s only good for about 80-100 miles on that seat. The Tacoma’s rear end is a little slidey, as there is rarely enough weight in the bed to hold it down. The 911SC I used to have had sport shocks, and it was a very rough ride until about 70 mph. All vehicles have quirks; but we put up with them because all cars have advantages. I find that the comfort, ride, fuel economy, and gadgets offered by the Prius outweigh its quirks.
That may be how the Prius drives, but I have a Honda Insight and it gets better mileage on the open road. The best mileage I get is when I’m cruising without stopping at about 40 mph but a good open highway can net me 46-50 mpg. My morning commute is stop and go the whole way and I’m lucky if I can hit 40 mpg on those drives. It only picks up when I get a long straight stretch without stops.
What I’ve found about the Insight is that my higher mpg has almost as much to do with how I drive than what I drive (heh, just noticed you said the same thing Johnny L.A.). It trains you to watch the gauge and be more conservative with your fuel usage. For me, it almost becomes a game of seeing how good I can get my fuel economy on each given trip. The result of which is that I don’t accelerate as quickly, I’m not as aggressive, and I maintain my speed better.
Sure, but 80 cents a gallon is a huge improvement over $3.50-4.00 per gallon, grid or not.
Electricity is going to get wayyyyy cheaper than 80 cents/gallon equivalent. According to this guy:
There’s also a handy chart halfway down with their projections of the prices of various power sources.
If 1 gallon is ~6 kwh, we’re talking 6 cents a gallon for solar-generated power in the future (right now we’re at about 60 cents). That can’t be beat- and surely gasoline will be getting more expensive as more and more wells run dry.
Anyway, as has been pointed out, it is the plug-in hybrids that really get the good mileage- so long as you don’t try to drive them up any mountains. Just wait a few years, those things will be improving a little bit with every new model.
Honda’s IMA system is rather different from the Toyota and Ford parallel design; AIUI Honda hybrids cannot move under electric power only. Their integrated motor assist only allows the engine to shut off at stops, and gives it a “boost” to get the engine and car moving.