CAN View-Very Cool! (caution: pictures)

[dcoyne78]

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A Prius seems to exhibit a much wider range of mileage performance than a conventional car, depending, essentially, upon your driving style and how hard you try. Last week, I drove New Orleans to Charlotte NC and back. Since I was willing to trade gas for time, I cruised at ~80-85 mph. I averaged 46 mpg on the way up and 43 on the way back. If I’ve got time and I’m willing to cut back to 65-70 mph, I’ll get over 50 mpg. On my in-city New Orleans commute (10 miles each way, if no side trips), I’ve gotten as low as ~42 mpg and as high as 51, again depending upon driving conditions. Grille blocking will gain 3-5 mpg over non-blocked, if conditions are appropriate (i.e. colder conditions). If traffic is sparse and I can execute a true “pulse and glide” pattern, add 5 mpg to how I’d do otherwise.

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Your canview is very cool. It's too bad the Prius doesn't come equipped with at least a temp gauge and tach, I think when I checked out the Canview it was $500 or so, a little rich for me.

On the fuel economy question, have you kept track of your lifetime fuel economy? I know this varies with temperature and driving conditions, but I wonder if your fuel dilution issue is related to long highway drives at 80 mph. I only drive on the highway occasionally and typically drive 65, so far I have not seen any fuel dilution problems. I wonder if Terry sees a lot of Prii with fuel dilution because people come to him when there's a problem, and maybe this is the most common problem that the Prius has seen thus far.

Dennis

 

[ekpolk]

Dennis:

It certainly is possible that Terry is seeing a "biased" view as a result of what he does. We will continue to investigate the source of my fuel dilution, and I'll let you all know what we find.

Yestereday, I passed along some of the questions posed in this thread to Norm. Here's the response I got back. Sorry, no kit for the BMW i-drive...

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The unit uses 3 microprocessors to handle decoding the CAN data, the touch-screen AVC data (a variant of NEC's IEBUS) and the display. No hardware specific chips, just purely real-time in software, thats how fast micros have got. And to answer a recent posting, you can guess my age when I say I not only remember IBM selectrics, I thought they were pretty neat. I started in a lab where one of the first computers was born and there was a guy whose job it was every morning to replace the tubes that had burned out during the night. So I agree that the CAN-view display is very 1980s looking, but its a case of what you can build with off-the-shelf parts at a price people will pay when you only sell 2 or 3 a month. At that rate an Ipod would be the size of a suitcase and cost 6 grand. Also, sorry, no BMW knowledge, I did this just for the Prius because that's what I drive, but I'm also helping someone adapt it for his Ford Escape Hybrid. A major problem that probably means there will be no generic unit for all the hybrids coming out is that unlike OBD2 where standard code requests get you the same response on every vehicle because the manufacturers all agreed on them, there is no such standard yet for hybrids so the hybrid specific data on the Toyota Prius for example is at totally different addresses in the Ford Escape hybrid.
This despite the fact that Ford licensed the technology from Toyota; I guess their engineers got the not-invented-here syndrome. So the Saturn/GM versions are likely to be incompatible too. /

regards, Norm

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[JohnBrowning]

THe fuel issue is probably linked more to the engine not staying at operateing temp. The engine is always turning on and off around town and at lower speeds. HWY cruiseing will never cause fuel issues that is what burns off excess fuel. Imagine how it would have been if you had not taken a long drive???? Short trips and lots of cold starts is what is usualy to blame for fuel issues assumeing all of the parts are in good order!

 

[JohnBrowning]

I would love to have oil pressure,oil temp.,diff temp., EGT, coolant temp., and amp meter in my vechiles from the factory!!! I would also like to have some space on the dash that is not curved and easy to mount these types of guages. THe OEM's use up all of the good space on the dash and then they leave nothing to play with!