"Eco" mode

[dondon]

I've only had the car for 2 weeks, but has anyone else gotten worse mileage in "ECO" mode?

For the first week I had it in eco mode and was consistently getting about 3.7-3.9 miles/kWh. I turned it off the second week and was consistently getting 4.5-4.7 miles/kWh. I'm not sure what settings change in eco mode, but it doesn't seem to have the intended effect. Acceleration was a little more sluggish in eco mode, as expected, but I did not see the comparable gain in efficiency. The vehicle was noticeable more peppy, especially off the line, with eco mode off.

In case it matters, during both weeks I would typically drive in "B" for local driving, and move it to "D" when I expected to get on the freeways. Has anyone else seen this kind of behavior out of eco mode?

 

[Ray]

I wonder if the more efficient to get out of ECO mode on the highway, and be in drive mode when at cruising speed (65 mph). Then drop into B mode with ECO on only during city traffic or stop and go traffic on the highway.
I wish the ECO button were on the steering wheel as well. Seems like a safer place to have it.

Ray

 

[dondon]

I should note that I had a mix of local and freeway driving both weeks, and I had noticeably lower mileage for both local driving as well as freeway driving with "ECO" mode engaged.

Of course, as expected, freeway mileage was lower than local mileage, but EVO mode had a negative effect on efficiency in both types of driving.

 

[mtndrew1]

If the Soul's eco mode is anything like all of the other EVs, it's merely a throttle remapping to make responses lazier and promote more subtle inputs. This is certainly how it seems to behave on my Soul.

As such, I'd imagine that what you're experiencing is more likely to be a set of variations in outside temperature, traffic flow, average speed, HVAC demand, and the like. Even a 5 MPH average speed variation would be enough to swing from 4.0 to 5.0 Mi/kWh on an identical drive. Eco mode wouldn't have anything to do with it.

One should be able to experience absolutely identical performance and consumption patterns given fixed parameters in either Eco or normal modes, unless Eco mode adjusts climate control output.

Eco mode is just an effort to encourage drivers to drive slower and accelerate more gradually through software variations; it doesn't actually change the consumption of the car for a given set of circumstances.

 

[iletric]

I wonder if someone, like Tony Williams, could do a precise measurement of both modes under the same circumstances, so we take all guesses out of the equation and instead look at some hard data...