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My Ford Mobile used to be a nice way to track how much fuel you were saving and give you an idea of how economically you drove. It had the side effect of making a better driver out of people who previously were "lane swervers", "peddle mashers", "tail gaters (not the football kind)", "hard stoppers", and "speeders". I welcomed the effect it has had on my driving. Until....... MY COMMUNITY!!!! I have noticed in the MY Community section of My Ford Mobile (MFM) that you are ranked on not using gas, regenerating miles from braking, average driving score, and average ratio of electric:gas. I am at a disadvantage of getting some of the highest rankings due to my average daily travel ( >22 miles), average speed on highways (>55 mph), and the unpredictable madness of stop n go rush hour traffic braking. So, to make up for those disadvantages, I try to get the best scores possible when not in those situations. I didn't think I had a problem until today. First, I used the "Gas Buddy" app to find the least expensive gas in my area. Then I calculated if driving a further distance to get cheaper gas would make sense. (It did.) I had a full big battery and set out on my 16.2 mile round-trip to buy gas that was .08/gallon cheaper. The trip would cost me approximately $0.70. The savings would be $0.96. I set off on my trip.This is when the madness began. Pulled out of my drive to head out of my development. Hit a small grade, started braking and the engine comes on. NOOOOO!!!!!!! :drop: this will drop my score due to the engine running. Maybe I can recover. It ran for less than 15 seconds. Maybe the computer won't notice. I continue on my trip out of town. It's gonna be mostly uphill for this trip so I can't expect a really high 3 digit MPGe score. Oh well. Advanced Cruise Control is set for 49 mph (50mph zone). I'm cruising. :shift: I see a traffic signal ahead. No one is around. It should stay green for me. 500 yards...400 yards...300 yards....200 yards... YELLOW....Can I make it....RED! You sonuvab!@$&!!!! Brake score 67%.... Made it to the gas station with few other surprises. Braking score-89% EV 100% (Whew!! It didn't notice) Driving score-90. 129 MPGe. Not bad. I wanted almost perfect to increase my ranking. Now it's time for the trip back. Mostly downhill. This should be cake!! Wrong....... Heading on my way home. Got the cruise control going. Dude behind me is pissed. He thinks I should be going 70 in a 50. Goes around me, gets in front and slams on the brakes. That ain't good for my braking score. Continue on. Road-rage-sunday-driver leaves me in his dust. Good for him. Hey remember that traffic light I talked about earlier? Yeah. It got me again. I wanted to slow down proactively on approach, but I didn't think that would go over well for the cars behind me. Braking score- 56% :banghead: The only thing I had going for me on the return trip was the amount of downhill stretches. This allowed me to get more regen miles and offset the 2 crappy braking scores. 100% EV, 91% Braking Score, 168 MPGe Driving Score.........85??!! I can get that driving score on I-95!!!! I found myself actually getting mad when I didn't brake better or when I couldn't be as efficient as I liked. WTH is that all about?!??!? The MY COMMUNITY aspect makes me even crazier about driving economically than I should otherwise be. Anyone else?

I wonder how the driving scores in MyFord Mobile are computed. Are they simply the average of the acceleration, braking, and cruising scores for each trip? Or are some other, and hopefully more relevant, weighting factors used? Obviously, for a long freeway cruise, the braking score is not going to be very relevant to fuel economy. The following is from MyFord Mobile for two different days for the same commute. Note that Thursday's Fuel Economy is better than Friday's Fuel Economy (64 vs 60 MPGe), however Thursday's driving score is worse (80 vs 87). If I look at the Coach Display in the car, it looks like Acceleration is about 100% and Cruising is about 85%. If I average that with a 97% brake score, I get 94, which is much higher than the scores shown by MyFord Mobile. However, I not sure what time interval is used to compute the values in the Coach Display. They may represent the average over several trips or just the last few miles of my last trip. Is there a way to reset the scores? Also, I wonder what factors are relevant to computing each of the individual scores. 1. The braking score is obvious. If it is 50%, you captured only half of the available energy that you could have captured. You could have gone twice the distance with the recaptured energy had you achieved 100%. 2. Cruising score must be based on speed. I suspect you get lower scores for higher speeds. But what other factors affect it? 3. Acceleration must be based on the amount of power you use when accelerating. But is that really relevant to fuel economy? If I apply twice the power, won't I get to the same speed in half the time using the same amount of energy? However, slower acceleration will mean that you will be driving at slower speeds for a longer period of time. Since the power increases significantly with greater speeds, you will be using less overall energy if you accelerate slowly. So in city driving, you don't want to accelerate quickly to get up to max speed only to stop at the next block for a stop light. It would be much better to accelerate slowly and not achieve max speed before the next stop light. You will use far less overall energy to go the same distance. However, is acceleration really relevant for freeway driving? I wonder if there is a list of techniques somewhere that one could apply to optimize fuel economy for the different driving situations, i.e. city vs freeway driving and hot vs. cold weather. If only we knew more details of how everything worked.