Yes, leaving in Mountain Mode until town would have left the buffer at whatever percent that it usually does, like 40% for Gen 1, leaving EV range for around town. I can't comment on Hold since I don't have that feature.
The inefficiencies of MM are often over-exaggerated. I have tried driving around town, running out of gas completely, reset trip meter, and then use MM to recharge until 1 gallon is burned and switch back to normal and see how far I can drive until engine starts again and use charge sustaining mode to see how far I can drive on 1 gallon of fuel and I got 40 mpg in both cases for similar driving technique (I actually did slightly better in MM, but not statistically significant difference).
Mountain mode runs the engine hard until the buffer is where it should be, but this is actually a fairly efficient mode to run the engine for power generated vs fuel burned, so it doesn't do as bad as you think. However, it is generally cleaner to generate the electricity from the wall.
Ideally though, you would switch to mountain mode (or hold mode) before you depleted your range. Then it wouldn't have the extra inefficiency of charging it back up.
I like to run the engine in MM occasionally to burn off extra crap since it runs nice and hot. It avoids the burn smell you get sometimes when the engine starts infrequently or only runs due to temp.
Eric
The inefficiencies of MM are often over-exaggerated. I have tried driving around town, running out of gas completely, reset trip meter, and then use MM to recharge until 1 gallon is burned and switch back to normal and see how far I can drive until engine starts again and use charge sustaining mode to see how far I can drive on 1 gallon of fuel and I got 40 mpg in both cases for similar driving technique (I actually did slightly better in MM, but not statistically significant difference).
Mountain mode runs the engine hard until the buffer is where it should be, but this is actually a fairly efficient mode to run the engine for power generated vs fuel burned, so it doesn't do as bad as you think. However, it is generally cleaner to generate the electricity from the wall.
Ideally though, you would switch to mountain mode (or hold mode) before you depleted your range. Then it wouldn't have the extra inefficiency of charging it back up.
I like to run the engine in MM occasionally to burn off extra crap since it runs nice and hot. It avoids the burn smell you get sometimes when the engine starts infrequently or only runs due to temp.
Eric
