Follow up after a few weeks of ownership:
I drive the R/T mostly on short trips around town, but have done 3 trips each over 200 miles. One of those trips was on mostly flat 2 and 4 lane highways, the other 2 were on a very mountainous (6% grades common for much of the distance) freeway.
1. I was curious if the gas motor goes through any sort of warm up before having to deliver any significant power. Yes.. it does. I live on a very steep hill. Driving in Hybrid mode, the ICE turns on at the bottom of the hill. For perhaps 30 seconds, it sits on a fast idle - 1700rpm - regardless if I'm stationary or not. It does not appear to be delivering any actual power to the drivetrain while warming up, as the engine speed is constant. It also does this in eSave mode.
2. Hybrid mode - Because of my usage patterns, I haven't really experimented with Hybrid mode much. The ICE seems to have a mind of it's own, as sometimes it is helping when pulling away from an intersection, sometimes it leaves the electric motor to fend for itself under similar conditions. Certainly under heavier throttle, it will come on. I haven't driven in this mode until the battery is near depleted, so I don't know if it tries to leave some reserve that could be used in full Electric (quasi-eSave mode, I guess) or not.
3. Sport mode - I only tried this briefly on one of my mountainous trips. Didn't like it, as it basically parks the tach between 4000 and 5000 rpm, even at steady speed. If I manually upshifted, it would just downshift again. I can't see the point of turning the engine that fast if it's not needed. Perhaps it would be useful in "point and squirt" driving on twisty switch backs.
4. Electric mode - Pretty much what you would expect. Just runs off the battery. A couple of times I've seen it jump to Hybrid for what seems like no logical reason, but that was soon after taking delivery. It hasn't done that since. Be aware that the car is no power house in Electric mode. 0-25mph is decent, but 25-60mph is best described as very leisurely. There is a tach-like gauge that shows power usage level. You will peg that gauge easily and often in normal city traffic use. This may sound critical, but it's not really. The power level is very adequate for city driving, which is why I bought the thing in the first place. In situations where you will need more power, you are likely to be in Hybrid or eSave mode.
5. eSave mode - Interesting. There are 2 sub-modes, Battery Save and Battery Charge. Battery Save holds whatever charge level the battery is currently at until taken out of eSave. Battery Charge will bring a depleted battery up to a pre-set SOC. I've been using Battery Save a lot recently on my highway trips. Gas motors are least efficient in stop-go traffic, so I save some electricity for town use, and use gas on the open road. For example, I drive from my house to the freeway on Electric. Then switch to eSave until I arrive at my destination city, where I switch back to electric. That's how I also operated my Chevy Volt. A couple of times I had depleted the battery, so I used Battery Charge to bring the SOC up to a useful level for when I arrived back home. Note that it takes a considerable amount of time to charge the battery this way, even to just the 40% level.
What's interesting about eSave is the driving dynamics. When accelerating or climbing a hill (physics students among you will mention that those are the same thing....), the gas and electric motors share the load. Each will put out, say for example, 30-40% of their available power. So it's not gas motor maxed out with the electric helping, or vice versa. This sharing is quite seamless, it's not noticeable what's going on without looking at the gauges. Since hills will deplete the battery below the set eSave level, the car will slowly recharge while going downhill or on level ground. It all works quite well. This is in contrast to my Chevy Volt, which would max out the gas engine on hills before resorting to the electric motor for assist.
In eSave, the transmission will "hunt" on hills. Not uncommon, I think nearly every car I've had does this. Some worse than others. But the Hornet has the advantage of going full manual and shifting via the paddles. After observing at what speed the system prefers operating the engine at under different conditions while using cruise control, I have essentially set my own operating parameters. At highway speeds, I shoot for 2500rpm, which is 85mph in 6th (high) gear. Moderate hills get 2800-3300rpm (5th). Steep hills need in the high 3's (4th). And if there are trucks on the hills that I might need to maneuver around, I might hold it in the low 4000 range briefly. These engine speeds and gear selections mimic what the cruise control does under similar conditions, but without the up/down hunting that happens on hills. They might seem high for those of us coming from cars with bigger motors, but remember this is only a 1.3L boosted motor. 6% grades at highway speeds require quite a bit of power. Also, as previously mentioned, these engine speeds are lower than what the car does by itself in Sport mode.
Anyway, I'm still learning.
Hans.
