European travel experience. 2,320 miles.

[colinE]

Having driven from the U.K. through France into Spain and back I thought it would be useful to share our experience of MPG and battery performance. We travelled a total of 2,320 miles which included motorway, urban and rural driving.

Left home with full tank of fuel and fully charged battery drove from South Devon to Portsmouth where I recharged the battery at typical U.K. extortionate rate 80p per kWh.

Driving mostly on PHEV but selecting EV mode and experimenting by switching between the two as the battery recharged.

Recharged the battery in France on two occasions and then the last charge until we returned home was at a hotel charging point in Spain. This was the last time we charged the battery until getting home in the U.K. The highest rate per kWh was 35 cents. Obviously we filled up with petrol as needed, the cost of petrol was slightly higher than the U.K.

Topped up with petrol when home and calculated the MPG was 49.68 which I was very pleased with. On completion of our trip the battery still showed 27 miles left not having been charged since Spain the long distance motorway driving allowed the recharge system to work very well. Total recharge from the charging stations was 28 kWh.

Excellent car to drive for both these long distance sessions and short trips in around towns and villages.

 

[mandrake079]

We've just completed a similar trip with (perhaps not surprising) similar results. We crossed from Portsmouth to Le Havre, then via the Normandy beaches to Bruges, Osnabruck, Kiel, Copenhagen, Lubeck, The Hague, then Rotterdam for a ferry to Hull, and home near Manchester. The total distance was 1967 miles over 15 days, mostly on fast motorways at speeds around 75mph, although there was enough urban driving to bring the overall average speed down to 42mph over just under 47hrs actual driving. The recorded fuel consumption was 46.3mpg, which feels pretty good, given the amount of high speed driving with a fairly hefty load of luggage.

We drove virtually all the time in HEV mode, and though we didn't try charging from a station, the battery range never fell below about 30 miles/48km, and most of the time hovered around 50 miles/80km. There seemed to be a practical engine recharge limit around 55 miles/90km that we couldn't improve on because sooner or later we would encounter a reduced speed area which would effectively drop the car back into EV mode, and it was also noticeable at higher speeds how much more the cruise control would call on electric boost to maintain distance from the vehicle ahead. The point is that there was always plenty of electric range for the town and city driving that we did do.

The car performed flawlessly, as it has since we took delivery in August, and the long stretches of European motorway with far fewer temporary speed restrictions than in the UK, provided a better insight into using the technology. I was particularly impressed with Intelligent Cruise Assist which operates much more reassuringly on wide, straight motorways with clear lane markings, than it does on the overcrowded, poorly maintained stretches of the M6 and M62 which are my usual territory. The only change I'd make if I could would be the ability to toggle easily between Speed Limiting and Cruise Control without taking my hands off the wheel, but apart from that I'm delighted with the car. The 'bings and bongs' are genuinely useful and I don't feel the need to disable any of the warnings (the Driver Distraction feature seems to be permanently switched off anyway, and I don't mind being prompted to take a break when I start yawning, which is the only thing it ever does).

In summary, I totally agree with Colin's assessment that the HS PHEV is a brilliant all-rounder, and I've no regrets (so far) about buying it.