the Walnut Diary

Yesterday I picked up a 2014 Lexus es300h in Hamilton and drove it 375 km home through holiday-weekend traffic.  Then my wife and I returned to Kingston this morning to collect my Porsche Cayenne from the train terminal.  The shock was in starting Ruby up.  My faithful companion for the last three years had suddenly become a creaky old car.

Driving the hybrid is an entirely different mechanical/gaming experience than I’ve had before. It’s quite interesting on several levels, and promotes a whole new set of bad behaviours. For example this morning I cruised up the hill through Morton at 100 km in a 60 zone so I didn’t have to get out of “eco” and re-accelerate. On the 401 yesterday I tended to hesitate a bit too long when overtaking to avoid getting out of cruise control for the same reason. The car has lots of zip in sport mode, but that lowers your score on the efficiency graph.  120 km/hr remained the optimal pace for travel on the busy road, but slower traffic brought its own rewards in a higher mileage score.