MPG with and without cruise control

[Bernie]

I’m still under 5,000 miles on my TRD Pro and haven’t done that many highway miles for longer trips. I drove about 300 miles yesterday, mostly without cruise control and felt that I might’ve gotten 1-2 better MPG whe the cruises wasn’t in use. Does this make sense to anyone? I’m driving the hybrid engine and in ECO mode.

Sponsored

 

[Rellims]

I've been thinking the same since I got it in February. With 3 long road trips under my belt I'm almost certain I get worse MPG on cruise control non-hybrid.

 

[Gumpus]

Sure it's possible. With cruise control your vehicle will work to maintain the set speed going up hills. Without cruise control it may be more natural to go a little faster downhill but not worry too much if you lose a little bit of speed going uphill. If my 5th Gen ever needs to downshift to maintain speed with cruise control I'll usually turn off cruise control.

 

[bakutheleo]

Someone commented on this somewhere else on this forum. They stated along the same lines--you can choose when to maintain the exact speed or not, so you can let it dip a little uphill but gain a bit more over your desired speed downhill. I am not sure how much of that makes a difference--or how well anyone can really do that. But, what I can see would make a difference is that the driver can anticipate things. For example, you see traffic slowing down so you can take your foot off the accelerator. Modern cruise control does this of course (if you have that option) but it will probably do it later and use brakes instead of coasting. With regenerative braking that may make a little less difference on the hybrid, but still would reduce MPG. The post I referred to also said that cruise control is probably great for long, boring trips where there are few hills and not a lot of traffic. I expect that is true. However, the radar assisted cruise control is also really nice for safety in many situations, so could be the better decisions in some situations.

Sponsored