Top 5 Tips For Electric and Hybrid Vehicles to Maximize Efficiency

Maintain Your Car

While electric cars need less maintenance than gasoline ones, poor upkeep can have the same detrimental effect on efficiency, regardless of fuel type. Make sure you’ve been following manufacturer-suggested service intervals for your car, and perform weekly checks on things like coolant levels and tire pressures. While electric cars don’t have an engine to keep cool, many use liquid cooling to keep the battery pack, inverter and motor operating at peak efficiency. Insufficient levels of cooling can result in poor performance, overheating components and even damage battery life. On the outside, under-inflated tires increase your car’s rolling resistance, meaning it will need to use more energy to push itself along, decreasing efficiency.

…poor upkeep can have the same detrimental effect on efficiency, regardless of fuel type…

Know Your Car

You can familiarize yourself with your vehicle by simply reading the owner’s manual. These vehicles can vary significantly in design, especially the way they manage energy use; tips that apply to one model may not apply to another. The manufacturer knows how to operate and maintain your vehicle to maximize fuel economy, driving range, and battery life. So, consult your owner’s manual for tips specific to your vehicle.

Keep the Battery Fully Charged

Use The Accessories such as heating, air conditioning, and entertainment systems can affect fuel economy on all vehicles, but they can have a greater effect on hybrids and electrics. So, keep that in mind when trying to maximize fuel economy or electric range. Preheating or precooling the cabin of a plug-in hybrid or EV while the vehicle is still plugged in, for example, can extend its electric range. Simply parking the auto in the garage will have similar effects.

Use the Economy Mode

Many of these vehicles come with an “economy mode” or some other similar feature that maximizes the vehicle’s fuel economy. In some vehicles, this mode can be activated by simply pressing a button. The economy mode may limit other aspects of the vehicle’s performance, such as acceleration rate, to save fuel.

Use Regenerative Braking System Efficiently

Avoid Hard Braking, anticipate stops and brake gently or moderately. This allows the vehicle’s regenerative braking system to recover energy from the vehicle’s forward motion and store it as electricity. Hard braking will causes the vehicle to bypass the regenerative system and thus use its conventional friction brakes, which do not recover energy.