What kind of MPG mileage are you getting with your Powerboost?

[Norheat]

which seems backwards for the name...you would think ECO would idle it lower

Yes, I think it is more to do with warm up and using the Generator. I turned mine off not sure if it helps but I don't think it idles as high if that function is on.

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[Dwildone]

Approaching 1000 miles with a 2” level and 275/65/20 BFG KO2s which add more than 12 pounds of unsprung weight per tire, my experience has been city mileage (hand calculated) in the 21-22 range due to electric miles and highway mileage at 18 if I drive 80mph and 20 if I drive 70mph. I’m satisfied with this and it is generally in line with what I expected. The highway mileage is marginally better than my 2017 eco boost with the same tires and level.

 

[CnB150Lariat]

Well, I am a very sad boi right now. I decided that for my first trip from Sac to San Jose, that I would do the same route that I call my "MPG run" because I can take highways where they are 55-60mph without bothering anyone. The above pic was my 2017 3.5 EB XLT 4x2 with 3.55 ratio. It didn't occur to me that it was probably my final trip with that truck and to do the MPG run until about 20 miles in, which is just flat getting out of Sacramento and doesn't affect the overall number really.

Here is my inaugural run with my '21 Powerboost KR 4x4 (3.73 ratio):

I am pretty sad, to put it mildly. I tried EVERYTHING!

• ECO mode (and I used ECO coach a lot, as well as the MPG screen using MyView)
• Going 55, going 65, going 45, 50....
  • There is NO speed at which I get more than 26 MPG steady state, flat terrain, constant speed, ECO/Normal, does not matter
  • This means it is MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for me to ever average >26 MPG on a round trip, what is this wizardly y'all are pulling???
  • On my 2017 4x2, I could ALWAYS "run up the score" by going 55-60mph and getting 27 MPG easy!
• While "electric miles" are fun, it does not seem to increase overall average when driving long enough
  • You deplete the battery anyway over several seconds maintaining speed, and the engine has to come on and work a *little* bit harder than it does on a full battery
  • I notice that typical RPM while maintaining 50mph or so is 1.4-1.5, but if you deplete the battery it will be 1.6-1.7.
  • On the flip side, if you do not deplete the battery using electric miles, sometimes you can coast all the way down to 1.2kRPM, and if lightly accelerating it will stay super low like 1.2-1.3 for a good while due to the electric assist (rather than fully electric miles)
  • For this reason, I think "electric miles" are more just a fun stat, but the internal algorithm will balance the battery usage optimally whether doing "electric miles" or "electric assist"
• I babied those regen brakes as best I could to keep the Eco coach in the "green" as when you go "white" it means you have reached friction zone.
  • This even meant a few rolling "california stops" so I didn't use friction (if you are a cop pretend you didn't read this)
• I tried Normal mode and it did not seem to make any difference on highways and country roads, it probably only matters in stop and go or city driving
• I tried Sport mode just in case, as I saw comments in an MPG thread that previous gen got better MPG in Sport - that would be a big NOPE!! It immediately drops about 4-5 MPG after switching to 4A.
• I tried switching to "ECO Idle" just in case it helps charge the battery faster when coasting but this likely is only affecting actual stationary idling (I didnt notice a change in the RPM range when coasting)

To sum up:

• I *know* how to baby an Ecoboost to get optimal MPG, see my initial post. I tried all my tricks AND MORE and cannot get anywhere near the Powerboost EPA ratings of 24/24/(24)
  • My prior Ecoboost had sticker EPA of 18/25/(21) which I routinely shattered

I do not believe it to be any of the following reasons:

• Temperature (both trips were roughly 50-65 degrees F)
• Gas type (both trips were likely "winter" gas one month apart)
• Break-in period (users @currybob and others got >24 or even >26 MPG in their first few hundred miles!)
  • Plus Bob and I basically have the same truck! Curb weight of 6000# 4x4 King Ranch
• Wind (there was no noticeable breeze either trip)

Lastly, in the first 120 miles or so in city driving, I have not come close to 24 MPG on any trip. Always between 18 (not trying) or 22 (TRYING REALLY HARD). I was attributing this to learning curve but I am not seeing light at the end of the tunnel if there isn't even ANY speed to "run up the score" above 26 MPG!

You’re experience thus far is about on par with my experience for the first 300 miles or so. However, mine gradually increased since then and now at about 1,000 miles in the numbers seem to be hitting the marks where I’m making trips and the computer is calculating over the 24mpg rating on most where I’m not hammering the throttle. I’ve Also made a couple of trips in warmer weather on easy cruising backroads where the trip computer calculated 26, 27, 28 mpg because I was babying it.

Not sure what it was that pushed the increases and gains for me. But a few things I’ve read are likely collectively doing it including engine breakin, battery breakin, warmer weather (helps the battery and engine) and last tank I used 91 octane rather than 87 since reading 91 is recommended. The one factor that I think helped the most is relearning how to drive the powerboost and a few tricks to maximize the electric miles. These are the top 3 for me maybe others can share theirs:
- There is no need to warm up the engine for a long time. Just go.
- accelerate slower than you’re used to. This is hard for me with all the power available. ?. But if no one is behind me I try to maximize electric acceleration.
- there’s also a trick to ride or tap the brakes for a second or two at high speed when you can coast or need to slow down instead of just coasting. The brake tap shuts the engine down at a higher speed than it would normally and tricks the system into shutting the engine and going electric.

 

[wayfarer556]

Coming up on 2500 miles on my PB 302A XLT F150. I have recently road tripped this vehicle from Austin, TX to Santa Fe NM, then to Colorado Springs CO and back. I've also done a lot of traveling since I bought it to Dallas and Houston.

I'd like to post a few observations as I have gotten to know this truck:

• Payload capacity for my model is 1648 lbs. This is with 4x4, FX4, and several tech packages. No sunroof. I think this is important because from what I've read elsewhere, heavier models with a payload sticker showing 1300 lbs seem to suffer a bit from their published MPG.
• Wind resistance makes a HUGE difference at nearly all speeds. In my roadtrip, I've had MPG completely tank (13 MPG going 60 - 70 MPH) due to significant headwind. Headwind combined with your regenerative breaking can actually keep your truck from coasting downhill at any decent speed if your truck is getting hit directly by headwind, and you actually need ICE to maintain a decent speed (50+ MPH)
  • Alternatively, I had a massive tailwind running from a large storm in Lubbock, and I got nearly 28 - 29 MPG going 80+ MPG. Awesome.
• Temperature starts making a noticeably negative impact under 40 degrees, give or take a degree. Electric mode engages barely at all until it gets warmed up. Will engage less often and for shorter periods of time.
• The truck does not give you battery charge indicator (which is silly to me for a hybrid even if Ford wants to pretend it's not), so you need to get a feel for your hybrid battery. If you can keep it charged pretty good, then you're going to get a lot of electric miles, and it's going to give you MPG back if you're like at 20mpg or below for a trip.
  • Use the shit out of your regenerative breaking. The trucks giant breaks and heavy ass I suspect charge the battery a lot more quickly than I've seen with other hybrid vehicles I've driven. If you can coast a lot or find a nice downhill to ride the brakes, you're going to get a great charge for your battery.
• I've seen electric mode kick in as high as 70 MPH if the conditions are correct (downhill, or coming off a high speed sprint to coast, tailwind, nice smooth pavement, a combination, etc). Usually if you release the throttle and the hybrid battery has enough charge, it will go to electric only at around 30 - 35 mph. If you feather the throttle and are on a flat road, you can either keep it there or slowly get up to about 55 mph until it needs to go to ICE again.
• Idling for long periods of time completely count against MPG and it will give you significant drops if you're idling for long periods of time. That being said, the truck idles in electric only for about 20ish minutes before needing about 3 minutes of ICE to charge the battery back.
• Break in helps. I started seeing regular +22 MPG on most trips in Normal mode about 400 - 500 miles in. I'm getting 23 - 25 pretty often now, unless there are special conditions (lots of uphill travel, wind resistance, or you intentionally are hitting the throttle at every opportunity
• I haven't quantified this yet, but 91 octane fuel just "feels" better for the engine than 87. ICE seems to be just quicker, crisper, more eager. I've read this helps with efficiency.
• Sports mode uses the hybrid motors to give you instant torque no matter what. This thing HAULS ASS. Like seriously, I've surprised all my friends as I lock them into their cushy, lazy boy type seats. Forget MPG at that point, the battery only exists at that point for instant power dumps..

Hope this helps. Love my Powerboost so far.

 

[daemonic3]

Coming up on 2500 miles on my PB 302A XLT F150. I have recently road tripped this vehicle from Austin, TX to Santa Fe NM, then to Colorado Springs CO and back. I've also done a lot of traveling since I bought it to Dallas and Houston.

I'd like to post a few observations as I have gotten to know this truck:

• Payload capacity for my model is 1648 lbs. This is with 4x4, FX4, and several tech packages. No sunroof. I think this is important because from what I've read elsewhere, heavier models with a payload sticker showing 1300 lbs seem to suffer a bit from their published MPG.
• Wind resistance makes a HUGE difference at nearly all speeds. In my roadtrip, I've had MPG completely tank (13 MPG going 60 - 70 MPH) due to significant headwind. Headwind combined with your regenerative breaking can actually keep your truck from coasting downhill at any decent speed if your truck is getting hit directly by headwind, and you actually need ICE to maintain a decent speed (50+ MPH)
  • Alternatively, I had a massive tailwind running from a large storm in Lubbock, and I got nearly 28 - 29 MPG going 80+ MPG. Awesome.
• Temperature starts making a noticeably negative impact under 40 degrees, give or take a degree. Electric mode engages barely at all until it gets warmed up. Will engage less often and for shorter periods of time.
• The truck does not give you battery charge indicator (which is silly to me for a hybrid even if Ford wants to pretend it's not), so you need to get a feel for your hybrid battery. If you can keep it charged pretty good, then you're going to get a lot of electric miles, and it's going to give you MPG back if you're like at 20mpg or below for a trip.
  • Use the shit out of your regenerative breaking. The trucks giant breaks and heavy ass I suspect charge the battery a lot more quickly than I've seen with other hybrid vehicles I've driven. If you can coast a lot or find a nice downhill to ride the brakes, you're going to get a great charge for your battery.
• I've seen electric mode kick in as high as 70 MPH if the conditions are correct (downhill, or coming off a high speed sprint to coast, tailwind, nice smooth pavement, a combination, etc). Usually if you release the throttle and the hybrid battery has enough charge, it will go to electric only at around 30 - 35 mph. If you feather the throttle and are on a flat road, you can either keep it there or slowly get up to about 55 mph until it needs to go to ICE again.
• Idling for long periods of time completely count against MPG and it will give you significant drops if you're idling for long periods of time. That being said, the truck idles in electric only for about 20ish minutes before needing about 3 minutes of ICE to charge the battery back.
• Break in helps. I started seeing regular +22 MPG on most trips in Normal mode about 400 - 500 miles in. I'm getting 23 - 25 pretty often now, unless there are special conditions (lots of uphill travel, wind resistance, or you intentionally are hitting the throttle at every opportunity
• I haven't quantified this yet, but 91 octane fuel just "feels" better for the engine than 87. ICE seems to be just quicker, crisper, more eager. I've read this helps with efficiency.
• Sports mode uses the hybrid motors to give you instant torque no matter what. This thing HAULS ASS. Like seriously, I've surprised all my friends as I lock them into their cushy, lazy boy type seats. Forget MPG at that point, the battery only exists at that point for instant power dumps..

Hope this helps. Love my Powerboost so far.

Love this post!

I have also made a major discovery. I was *hoping* that if you let it basically auto pilot (adaptive cruise control) in ECO mode the computer will know how to absolutely maximize the MPG. I WAS RIGHT! I was in stop and go traffic jams on the interstates today and I let it do all the braking and accelerating, all while watching the EV coach screen.

Here are some strategies the computer uses:

• It does perfectly what is REALLY hard to do with my foot - if it can use electric, it will max the blue bar perfectly, and if an upshift enables more blue bar it immediately gobbles it up but it does NOT try to keep extending electric once the blue bar starts to shrink and will let hybrid kick in
• It is BRILLIANT at using the regen braking! I am not kidding it will maximize the green regen zone while not entering the white unless absolutely necessary. In fact, it will DOWNSHIFT to keep in the green zone! I believe the downshift not only uses engine braking but increases the RPMs on the generator strategically. This is EXTREMELY difficult to do manually - there's no way to compete with the computer in this regard...
• It keeps constant speed perfectly. No matter how hard I try I am generally about +/-2 MPH of what I want to drive but the steadiness of the computer optimizes out any unintentional accelerating

This is my absolute best score on accel/decel so far, because the computer is a MASTER at it. I let the computer drive basically the last 110 miles or so which made those scores damn near perfect. The speed is well, bad, because I'm not a perfect angel.

This was way better than my "MPG run" route where I did all my old tricks and couldn't break 22 MPG barrier. Next time I will see what the computer gets me on the country road route - should be interesting!! The above was with all interstates, and is typically a 2 hour trip but traffic made it nearly 3, lots of brake lights and stop and go on the freeway due to bay area log jams.

 

[daemonic3]

I did more experimentation if anyone else finds this interesting. I used an extremely flat section of I-5 in California between Stockton and Sacramento to plot some points of MPH vs MPG. This should be applicable to most Powerboost 4x4's.

Control variables:

• 64 degrees F outside
• No noticeable wind on any trees
• Flat interstate, sea level
• KR Powerboost 4x4, 3.73 ratio, ~6000# curb weight, tonneau cover
• 87 Octane, assume winter gas
• 10th gear was maintained

Each data point was collected by setting the cruise and if nothing disturbed my speed for 2 uninterrupted minutes, I recorded the data point, using my Trip2 meter. If a car slowed me down I would have to reset my meter. I tried to cover the range from 55-80. Going slower than that was both excruciating and would be super annoying to other motorists. I picked spots and speeds where I flowed with traffic.

Overall it is a very linear trend in this 10th gear range! Good R-squared correlation. It can be seen that you lose roughly half an MPG for every MPH you go up. This makes the math easy!

Basically lets say 55mph yields 28 MPG, and you want to predict 65mph, you can basically expect to lose (65-55) * 1/2 = 5 MPG to yield 23 MPG. 75mph would put you at 18 MPG, and 85mph *should* yield 13 MPG if the linearity continues (unverified).

Who knows if this will change over time (break-in) or with 91 octane but it gives me something to work with, and the physics should universally apply on these trucks.

 

[Jimmyle1511]

I got about 635 miles from a full tank down to 40miles to E,
Have around 900 miles now, 2nd time refuel.

Average 23.5 MPG.
Each trip i have about 40-45% using electric of total miles

 

[Smitdog]

Coming up on 2500 miles on my PB 302A XLT F150. I have recently road tripped this vehicle from Austin, TX to Santa Fe NM, then to Colorado Springs CO and back. I've also done a lot of traveling since I bought it to Dallas and Houston.

I'd like to post a few observations as I have gotten to know this truck:

• Payload capacity for my model is 1648 lbs. This is with 4x4, FX4, and several tech packages. No sunroof. I think this is important because from what I've read elsewhere, heavier models with a payload sticker showing 1300 lbs seem to suffer a bit from their published MPG.
• Wind resistance makes a HUGE difference at nearly all speeds. In my roadtrip, I've had MPG completely tank (13 MPG going 60 - 70 MPH) due to significant headwind. Headwind combined with your regenerative breaking can actually keep your truck from coasting downhill at any decent speed if your truck is getting hit directly by headwind, and you actually need ICE to maintain a decent speed (50+ MPH)
  • Alternatively, I had a massive tailwind running from a large storm in Lubbock, and I got nearly 28 - 29 MPG going 80+ MPG. Awesome.
• Temperature starts making a noticeably negative impact under 40 degrees, give or take a degree. Electric mode engages barely at all until it gets warmed up. Will engage less often and for shorter periods of time.
• The truck does not give you battery charge indicator (which is silly to me for a hybrid even if Ford wants to pretend it's not), so you need to get a feel for your hybrid battery. If you can keep it charged pretty good, then you're going to get a lot of electric miles, and it's going to give you MPG back if you're like at 20mpg or below for a trip.
  • Use the shit out of your regenerative breaking. The trucks giant breaks and heavy ass I suspect charge the battery a lot more quickly than I've seen with other hybrid vehicles I've driven. If you can coast a lot or find a nice downhill to ride the brakes, you're going to get a great charge for your battery.
• I've seen electric mode kick in as high as 70 MPH if the conditions are correct (downhill, or coming off a high speed sprint to coast, tailwind, nice smooth pavement, a combination, etc). Usually if you release the throttle and the hybrid battery has enough charge, it will go to electric only at around 30 - 35 mph. If you feather the throttle and are on a flat road, you can either keep it there or slowly get up to about 55 mph until it needs to go to ICE again.
• Idling for long periods of time completely count against MPG and it will give you significant drops if you're idling for long periods of time. That being said, the truck idles in electric only for about 20ish minutes before needing about 3 minutes of ICE to charge the battery back.
• Break in helps. I started seeing regular +22 MPG on most trips in Normal mode about 400 - 500 miles in. I'm getting 23 - 25 pretty often now, unless there are special conditions (lots of uphill travel, wind resistance, or you intentionally are hitting the throttle at every opportunity
• I haven't quantified this yet, but 91 octane fuel just "feels" better for the engine than 87. ICE seems to be just quicker, crisper, more eager. I've read this helps with efficiency.
• Sports mode uses the hybrid motors to give you instant torque no matter what. This thing HAULS ASS. Like seriously, I've surprised all my friends as I lock them into their cushy, lazy boy type seats. Forget MPG at that point, the battery only exists at that point for instant power dumps..

Hope this helps. Love my Powerboost so far.

What does ICE stand for?

 

[rikker]

What does ICE stand for?

Internal Combustion Engine.

 

[mrtrav]

Right now I am at 18.3 for the life of the 200 miles of the truck, but I am pretty sure the dealer was heavy on the accellerator for the 40 miles they had the car. When I picked it up I was starting at around 12 mpg and it's steadily gone up from there, so I think I am probably close to 20 or above. I plan on resetting the counter when this tank runs out and trying what it does with 91 to see if there is any difference.

 

[doolin64]

Approaching 1000 miles with a 2” level and 275/65/20 BFG KO2s which add more than 12 pounds of unsprung weight per tire, my experience has been city mileage (hand calculated) in the 21-22 range due to electric miles and highway mileage at 18 if I drive 80mph and 20 if I drive 70mph. I’m satisfied with this and it is generally in line with what I expected. The highway mileage is marginally better than my 2017 eco boost with the same tires and level.

Have you adjusted for the tire size? This has me very excited. I'm seriously considering trading out of my 21 Ram Laramie for a 21 Ecoboost XLT. I miss my 2015 F150 and need to get back.

 

[wayfarer556]

What does ICE stand for?

Internal Combustion Engine

 

[brnt]

I live in an area with hills and mountains. Most driving has ups and downs and they seem to be brutal on MPG. The rare drive with no change in elevation yields 28-29 MPG, but on the standard hilly stuff I generally see 21-22. I'd say that the only atypical driving habit I have (that I'm aware of) is that I slow down *very* early for stop lights. I picked that up while driving a woefully underpowered '93 4Runner which really struggled to get back up to speed if it ever slowed down

 

[tn.lariat]

Here's mine from about a week ago. Mostly city and one 80 mile Hwy weekend drive. A lot better then my 17' Ecoboost.

 

[Jack in Prescott]

Folks following this thread might find this just-posted video of interest. The F150 is a XLT PB and the owner, who has a Youtube channel some/many of you view on occasion, was shooting for an around-town mileage of 30 mpg.



Jack

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