I have had the 2014 eHybrid for a while but thought what's the best I can do before I take it back to the gas pump. Starting with a full tank of gas and using all electric between trips, grid-charging, e-Charge mode on highways and mixed mode driving over a month or so, the best I got was 842 miles when the gas light turned on.

I am sure there is enough reserve in there for me to do another 100 miles or so. I filled the tank to full with 18.4 gallons giving me an approx mpg(e) of 45.7.

Not bad at all considering it wasn't all driving like a grandma.

 

I used 26 gallons for my first 800 miles, which was about 30 MPG, so not nearly as good as your results. I do a lot of grid charging, but I had one long trip (350 miles) in there which obviously was mostly gas.

 

Wow - that's pretty incredible.

Do you find much change in the range with lower temperatures and using the cabin heating? My Volt is greatly effected by outside temps and cabin heating.

 

This morning the ambient was 24F, and for the first time ever the ICE came on when the car was "fired" up.

I'll find out tonight how poor the E-range was.

Typical fill has been mid-600 miles and 18.X gallons. Our use case is less-than-ideal for max mpg. Daily round trips of 86 miles. With grid connection for only one leg.

 

It is. Recently the charge is down to around 14-15 miles. Batteries jus don't like cold temperatures. I am guessing my range is going to be lower in winters a whole lot more. The engine did come on while driving out the driveway as the temp was in the 20s.

I am guessing I can easily get to the magic 1000 miles between gas fills in summers or decent weather.

 

That is still great mileage (mid 30s) for what you call less-than-ideal. Glad to hear the eHybrid is proving it's worth.

 

Extreme cold weather dipped my full charge to 11 miles today. Actual all electric miles were less obviously.

A month earlier when the weather was kind to us, a full battery charge would show approximately 17-20 mile range and actual all electric range was very close to what was on the display.

 

I guess it's ok, but with the cold weather, the average will certainly dip a couple MPG. The PSeH replaces a cherished old-school (W211) E320cdi. That car was simple, pretty and returned better mpg. Day in an day out, it didn't matter, it pulled mid 30's under all driving conditions. And if you really hammered it on long stretches of the interstate, you could get her up into the low 40's.

Apples to oranges in terms of vehicles, but fundamentally these are both daily-driven RWD sedans/appliances.

The only real value I see in the PSeH is the HOV plates. Sad, but true. One cannot place a dollar value on time not spent sitting in traffic. IMO

 

Well I am coming from a Range Rover Sport that averaged 17 mpg on a light pedal day. So moving to high 20s in a cayenne would be a huge step. Especially in another sporty lux SUV that I will enjoy commuting in.

 

That's a good trade-off.

TBH, if the CSeH was available earlier this year, we likely would have made room for it, rather than the PSeH. It would have either replaced the G wagen or been added as another DD. Only issue with the Cayenne is the size. It is a tiny SUV in terms of cargo (for dogs, etc).

Overall, I think the CSeH makes a lot more sense than the PSeH. but that's what was available at the time. I don't know what the sale projections are, but I would guess the plug in SUV will outsell the sedan by a massive multiple. PSeH's are selling 80/month in the US this year.

I actually have a feeling that we may end up with the CSeH within a year or two, anyway.

 

31F this morning. ICE did not fire up at departure. Battery range displayed at 13 miles.

 

Mine does 8.5L/100km all day on highway pulling at 70-80 miles . I think 7.8-7.9 is archivable at 60mph and letting go off the gas sometimes.

 

I've found the Panamera S e Hybrid is rather idiosyncratic in turning on the ICE. Sometimes it just announced it wants to burn gas, even if the battery is fully charged, and it's not clear why. Most of my routine trips are under 8 miles, so I thought I'd be running on pure electric unless I was burning gas for fun. That's not how it's been.

I've assumed that at least part of this is that I don't drive every day. The manual makes some nebulous mentions of running the ICE for "fuel tank ventilation" or other undefined reasons if the car has been parked for a while.

Keeping the 12 volt system charged is also an issue, which is annoying, since the lithium-ion system could easily charge the 12 volt system while the car is parked, and definitely has a system for charging the 12v system from the 384v system - PCM shows the system voltage as climbing to 14v when it kicks in. The amount of energy required to do so is trivial, the 12v system can store 0.9 kWh at maximum, versus the 9.4 kWh of the traction battery.

Which car in your signature?

The PSeH has done 35 MPG (US) for me at 65-70 MPH on cruise control, and seems capable of doing that indefinitely. That's 6.7 L / 100km. It will shut the ICE off for a few minutes, either coasting or running on battery, and then restart it. Since this is long past the point where electric drive is normally available, presumably it's getting the battery power from downhill stretches and the like.

Honestly, it seems a bit mysterious to me, I don't understand how the hybrid system would help much at a steady highway cruise, but it definitely does, since from what I gather that's at least 25% better than what you can expect from a Panamera S.

I'm guessing the Cayenne S e Hybrid will be similar, but probably slightly worse, since it has a significantly higher drag coefficient (0.36 vs. 0.3), and that's a big factor at highways speeds.

 

The other thing that sometimes drives me nuts is how the "gas mile range" drops for no reason while driving on electric alone. Sometimes the engine will fire-up and then shutdown and the miles start increasing. Gremlins I tell you!

 

Yeah, the estimated range on gas is a pretty neat feature, but it's usually so far wrong that I ignore it.

You'd think it would be based on what you're currently doing. That is, if you're on a long highway trip, it should use your usage for the last 50-100 miles to estimate. It clearly doesn't do that. On my 350 mile road trip to Vermont, it never did quite acknowledge the mileage I was getting. By the end of the trip it really should have shown another 300-350 mile range, based on fuel left and recent efficiency, and it was showing 200.

Right now it's displaying 535 mile range on a full tank, according to PCC. I have no idea where it's getting that figure - it's not total MPG, which displays 28.7, that would give a range of ~570 miles, and it's not recent MPG, which would be ~400-450 miles, if you subtract battery usage and figured how much gas I used for city driving. As you say, it seems to change during a trip, but not as quickly as you'd expect, or in a predictable way.

I have another longish trip coming up for Christmas, to Vienna VA and back, and it'll be interesting to see what the car says. That's 450 miles one way, which should be no trouble on one tank, but which will require refueling to return.