jjeff said:
I do wonder though about the whole frozen water bottle thing. Do you sit on them, place them in front of the dash diffusers, use them to drink, other??
I just drop two in the center console cup holders and one in the driver side door before departing, then put them back in a freezer as soon as I arrive at my destination. If it's really hot, I might drop an extra one in the passenger side door.
My commute is short enough that they don't really melt enough to drink them during the trip. I run the fan to circulate air around the bottles and usually enable the car's A/C -- the frozen water bottles help pre-cool air being sucked into the car's A/C so it doesn't have to work very hard. Think of the frozen water bottles as like an extra battery -- only this directly puts out cold air instead of electricity and frozen water is dirt cheap compared to lithium.
Also why not ECO mode? I always use ECO on mine as it doesn't have a B mode and ECO gives me more regen which I generally want. If I didn't then I might turn it off, that or as you do, ship into N for maximum coasting with zero regen.
As far as I can tell, ECO doesn't produce any heavier braking power than B mode when slowing down, so what would I use ECO for? I don't like how abruptly weaker the accelerator pedal maps to when speeding up in ECO mode. B mode works smoother and easier to control IMO. If my car didn't have B mode, I'd substitute ECO mode and learn to deal with the accelerator mapping.
My goal is to minimize use of regen whenever conditions allow (you never get back as much as you put out). If braking is necessary, I prefer D mode regen when braking distances allow. I suspect the lower peak current is more efficient.
Avoiding high peak currents is more efficient during acceleration too, to a point. I aim for around 20kW to 40kW power output (four bubbles) during acceleration, then immediately switch to cruise control. Accelerating above or below four bubbles doesn't seem to work as efficiently for me.