We're still on our first 500 miles of driving in our 2021 Countryman SE (a.k.a. PHEV), and still on our first 3/4 of a tank of gas since we're mostly using it for short trips running errands, on MaxEV mode. I'm now thinking very hard about how to optimize fuel within our small "fleet" of cars, but I don't think I have a handle on exactly how to calculate and/or operate our MINI for best fuel efficiency on longer trips. We had originally envisioned this being the car our daughter drove to/from school, which is a 14.2 mile drive one way, so 28.4 miles there and back (assuming no joy riding). Of course, with the pandemic there is no driving to/from school at the moment, but we're hopeful that may change. In the meantime, we've got time to run the calculations.

When we're fully charged in the morning, the car tells me it's got 20 miles of EV driving if I'm using the heat or A/C, or 24 if I'm not. I know the car is rated at 29 mpg but I guess I don't understand whether that's 29 mpg once the EV portion is entirely depleted, or 29 mpg when you're on AutoEV. What's the mileage rating when you're forced into AutoEV after depleting all miles possible on MaxEV... lower than 29 mpg? And so what would your strategy be if you were looking at 28-29 miles per day.... drive all you can on MaxEV and then the rest on AutoEV? Or drive the whole thing on AutoEV? I guess I don't fully understand how AutoEV works (and to tell the truth, when we tried to ask this question at the many, many dealerships we visited, salesmen were quite squirrelly). Who's got a better bead on this, perhaps informed by real-world use?

 

Maybe you could set up a spreadsheet & record your results with the various settings. Just fill it up between mode changes & record the miles driven. Maybe you can trade the info at the dealer for some service . . . (Yeah right)

 

Thanks, Minidogger... I guess I'm asking folks here who might already have experience what they've seen in terms of optimizing MPG. But while I'm back writing this, here's another conundrum: Why is the battery level on the left-hand side of my "digital instrument cluster" always at 50%? Is this a defect? Seems like a useless gauge, if it's supposed to be measuring something...