Would it be technically possible to have a pulse and glide setting as part of the cruise control system? At first glance, it seems that a cruise control pulse and glide might be able to get better mph than the manual method now being used. The easiest way to do this would be as part of the cc logic -- implemented by Toyota engineers. Perhaps a third party mod could accomplish the same thing, but seems complicated to do in a non-intrusive way? On the other hand, it might be dangerous to have such a setting? Any thoughts?
Technically possible, I suppose, but I'm not sure I want to be following someone who keeps varying their speed by wide margins... You sure would need to pay attention to what your car is getting you into. Besides, I think true pulse and glide is better done by an intelligence who can read the road ahead... This is from one of the camp of people who thinks a 5-passenger car getting the fuel economy of a motorcycle without having to think about it is pretty cool all by itself!
From what I know about pulse and glide, it often requires to exceed the speed limit then glide to below the speed limit and back. There is NO WAY any manufacturer is going to touch that!
You can do a "micro" pulse and glide. Go one to two over, just enough so that you can get in to glide and then go 2-3 under and repeat as necessary. If no one is behind you can slip to lower speeds under.
What was mentioned in another thread at one point was having a min and max for the CC. This would improve the fuel efficiency using cruise control as well. It would actually be quite simple. CC could maintain max speed as long as fuel efficiency was above a certain mark (say 50mpg). As it starts to drop, it would lower the speed to try to maintain above 50mpg. On any kind of uphill slope, this would result in travel staying at the min speed. On the downhill, as soon as it was above 50mpg, it would continue to increase the throttle as long as it stayed about 50mpg. So on even terrain or downhill slopes, you'd get back up to max speed. Overall, I think this would help improve efficiency. This is similiar to how I drive, speeding up on the downhills and losing some of that speed uphill.
Maytrix, that type of thinking takes advantage of some of the techniques which are being developed by astute drivers such as yourself. I suspect that Toyota originally developed the cc logic for the "typical" driver who doesn't want to change their old fashioned driving methods or take the time to understand the underlying technology of the Prius and learn to extract the extra mpgs.
