Fastmover,
What part of the country are you in? I see you are averaging 44 mpg! .....
I live in Washington State in a rural area south of Seattle and east of Olympia Washington in rolling foothills on the west side of the Cascades. I have a 32 mile communte (one way) that is mostly over two lane rural highways at a predominant speed of 55 MPH. Faster is not usually possible due to traffic, which includes logging trucks, feed trucks and lots of 16 wheelers. I am sufficiently rural that even heavy trucks must use the two lane routes, yet close enough to Olympia that the traffic is heavy enough to prevent passing. Also, there are very few stops along the main part of the communte. One stretch is 8 miles without a stop sign or light. Another is 6, etc. I have only about two miles of "city" type driving with stop lights and other speed limits, and these are coordinated to a speed of between 35 and 45 MPH, so with a little planning and by driving ahead of the car, you can avoid stops. I frequently drive to work, 32 miles away with only two complete stops. Same thing at the end of the day going home.
I am not a severe hypermiler, but I do study my car and drive to take advantage of the efficiencies that it offers. I use a driving profile for my commute that includes planned speeds for each curve and segment, planned accelerations and decelerations, and use of speed changes and dynamic braking to optomize the use of kinetic energy with a minimum of battery cycles. I have a scan gauge, and its primary use is to let me know accelerator pedal position. By doing this I can best determine when to place a charge on the battery bus, and when to just allow kinetic energy to build to be used on the next hill or curve. The use of raw kinetic energy is very important in my own driving profile because using it is much more efficient that converting it into a battery charge and then re-converting back into mechanical drive energy.
Route selection is also a part of my commute profile. I use two different routes each day, one to go to work and the other returning. Both routes are selected becasue they have steeper uphill segments and longer downhill segments that permit extended coasting (neutral charge/discharge). The routes also permit me to end with a charging segment and begin with a segment that requires the ICE anyway, so that the energy used for warmup is not wasted.
RFB