When driving in hybrid mode with some electric charge on the battery, the car always depletes the battery before using engine even if using the engine is more efficient, say on the highway. I feel that when I’m on the highway it is best to use the engine and then switch to electric on back roads. I find myself manually changing the drive mode to hybrid hold. If I don’t, then the battery just depletes without using the engine , which is more efficient on the highway.

has anybody else experienced this? I am constantly changing drive modes and not able to just leave it on hybrid auto, and it do the best thing for efficiency.

 

The way to avoid this is to set a navigation destination. Doing so will cause the computer to attempt to optimize batter consumption over the duration of the trip, using the engine during the phases where it will be most efficient. I've used this feature and even on very long trips it will carefully utilize battery power all throughout the journey.

 

Thank you. If I do this it will def drain the battery on that trip, right? For example, I drive to work and use electric to highway and then put on engine once I’m cruising. When I hit traffic I switch to electric. I get to work with still lot of battery left to get me home following same method. If I follow your suggestion, would it look to drain whole battery on the way to work?

 

Correct. So what I do (and actually the manual suggests this as a best practice) is to set an itinerary vs. just a destination. I set home as the destination and then set work as a waypoint. Now the computer will optimize across both legs over the course of the day. If you an appointment you can plug that in as well. I have saved an itinerary called "Work Day" as a favorite and just recall it each morning when leaving. Using this method I almost always end up with approx. 50% battery when arriving at work.

 

Great idea! Thanks so much. I’m going to give it a shot.

 

Next silly question is how do I create an itinerary? I looked and looked. I’d like to save them so can use as suggested. It’s an 2023 s60 recharge

 

My car is a 2022 so I have Sensus vs. Google, but looking at the manual I can see that while it's easy to add waypoints in Google Maps, thus creating an itinerary, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to save that itinerary for future use.

Maybe if you do it once the route will appear under "recents" in Google Maps for subsequent trips?