MIMA #005 Hypermiler Highwater


Randall's setup and best commute

Welcome to the MIMA family to all the new installs. That must have been a super weekend experience for you guys, and looked like great weather for the event. Cool to see all the Insights in a row. Excellent web page Mike.

I have been totally pleased with the MIMA install on my unit. I was one of those, as Mike has mentioned that was experiencing recals before I installed MIMA. When I would get into a commute situation that was using lots of assist, such as hill climbing in traffic, I would get State of Charge (SOC) down to the point of forced recalibration. This happened many times prior to MIMA. Post MIMA, I have been able to manage SOC to prevent these forced recalls from taking place. Yes, I had a go a round or two, with the lead finger syndrome (operator manually draining the available battery capacity with the joystick), and during this time, with the input of others here at IC, it was determined that my battery is one of the weaker ones. I am only able to use about the top 4 to 5 bars of indicated charge. This limited capacity has not been a problem for my commute; as I said sometime back, I only need to use a small portion of charge_AT_MY_DISCRETION_for hill climbing, This is the beauty of MIMA. It allows the operator to manage the assist/regen for optimum individual performance, whether that be fuel economy(for me) or leaving the guy next to you behind from the green light. I have only had one recal since I got over the lead finger, and this was just a few days ago. I was in the PIMA mode and got some traffic behind me, and while accelerating up hills to stay out of the way, and with my attention focused elsewhere, the SOC got down too far. Normally when it gets down to this point, I just go back to MIMA mode 1 (manual) and this turns off all IMA defaults, allowing me to avoid the forced recal.

I find that I use a mixture of all three modes of operation now available to me. Factory IMA, MIMA, and PIMA. When starting out on my commute, I will use factory IMA assist in first and second gear, then hit MIMA mode 1 while shifting into third or fifth to kill IMA charge, until the car gets warmed up. While cruising in the 25/35 mph zones in town I'm generally still in mode 1, at least up until the point of lean burn enable. Once lean burn is available I can use the higher mpg to do either factory charge or PIMA charge. Back in the warmer weather I had my PIMA activation points set at ~100mpg for assist and 125/130 for regen. Since the colder weather has moved in, and the lean burn window has lowered its address on the instantaneous display, I have both narrowed and lowered my set points to ~90 for assist and ~115 for regen. During unmolested commute cruising, I do what I'll call sip_and_dribble while in the PIMA mode. On the uphills I back off on the throttle and try to (sip) keep 1 amber led lit up and at the same time allow the vehicle speed to drop slightly. If the hill calls for it, I just let PIMA do its thing, and usually 2 ambers will climb it. If the speed begins to increase going uphill, back off slightly until speed stabilizes and carry on. After cresting, I back off on the throttle until I get 1 green led (dribble), and let the speed increase while maintaining throttle position. This is not a 1 to 1 ratio. Amps out is twice that of amps in. Enter factory default. The deficit in PIMA charging is made up while on the ~level~ ground. Since I am dribbling back in up around the top of the lean burn window, I use factory charging to make up the needed SOC by cruising down around what would be the assist set point were I still in PIMA. This is at night. During the daytime its tricky to get factory to charge even when down 3 to 4 bars SOC. That's another story, and I'm long winded already. Yes, you could jog the assist/regen points but I prefer to leave them where they are because they work well for me there, and I don't want to have to find them again. Always watching for traffic behind me, I like to stay off the friction brakes as much as possible. There are a couple of 30mph curves in my commute and if I get into the curves a little too fast, backing off while in PIMA will use regen to slow down, or pulling back on the stick while in MIMA. When coming to a known stop and needing regen (if not doing a FAS) I down shift to 4th and pull back on the stick until I get some shudder, then repeat in 3rd and 2nd down to 10 mph or less where I can usually get it to AS by shifting into neutral with the clutch in. The green AS light does not come on most of the time, but it self starts when shifted into gear just like factory AS.

As for results: well I just filled up (dead dino) Thursday, Nov. 17 and I have 3 days commutes on that tank, well over 100 mpg and a couple just under 100, and this is in much colder temps than August. I usually get 10/11 days out of a tank. The tank was 92.8 with 864 miles. The last three days were mpg killers. The 15th we literally had a 40 mph constant wind straight out of the North (per the weather man). This is a 0 degree headwind for me coming home. Had it not been for MIMA, I would likely have had a recal. I just turned on Mode 1 (off IMA) and cruised in fourth at ~48 mph ~21/2200 rpms (read keep up momentum against the wind), and climbed hills in third. Got home with 76.1 mpg. I had been setting on ~100mpg when I got to work that night. YUK.. This northern front continued for two days and brought much lower temps and the next two days mpg were 87 and 86.
To sum it up, MIMA is a great tool. It will allow you to manage the SOC to optimize your performance, whatever that may be. I look forward to hearing about the experiences of all the folks in the latest install.

Randall MIMA #005