Hillclimbing with the Yaris Hybrid

It's a common belief that hybrid cars are best suited for urban usage.
Last evening I went for dinner hillside near my home town.
It was a 68 Km round trip.
Here is the elevation profile of the road:

It's a 34 Km road that crosses several small towns, max speed was 80 Km/h due to several speed cameras.
Starting elevation is 97 meters, ending is 329.

Ending mileage was 3.9 L/100Km.
By comparison, the week-long average consumption of my all-urban travelling was 4.4.
It seems that hybrid cars are not only for the city.

Touch&Go update process

It seems that the Touch&Go system is raising some curiosity. http://haxor.fi/2012/10/how-the-firmware-updates-work-on-toyota-touch-go

Mounting a disk image

Dumping a full disk is a quick way to perform a backup:

# dd if=/dev/sdb of=filename.dsk

But once you have such a dump, you can't directly mount it, you must use kpartx:

# kpartx -av filename.dsk
add map loop0p1 (252:0): 0 7830408 linear /dev/loop0 1144

You can see the partitions with fdisk

# fdisk -l /dev/loop0

Disk /dev/loop0: 4009 MB, 4009754624 bytes
128 heads, 22 sectors/track, 2781 cylinders, total 7831552 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc3072e18

      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/loop0p1   *        1144     7831551     3915204    b  W95 FAT32

Now you can mount the partitions that are inside the disk image.

# mount /dev/mapper/loop0p1 /mnt
# df -h
Filesystem           Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5             31G   12G   18G  41% /
udev                 3.9G  8.0K  3.9G   1% /dev
tmpfs                1.6G  960K  1.6G   1% /run
none                 5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none                 3.9G  200K  3.9G   1% /run/shm
/dev/sdb5             20G  1.4G   18G   8% /home
/dev/mapper/loop0p1  3.8G  1.1G  2.7G  29% /mnt

Once you've done, you can umount it with

# umount /mnt
# kpartx -dv filename.dsk
del devmap : loop0p1
loop deleted : /dev/loop0

Note:
Ubuntu doesn't have kpartx installed by default:

# sudo apt-get install kpartx

Hybrid Synergy Forum

Chances are that if you landed on this page, you're interested in hybrid cars.
The real authority in the field is here:

http://www.hybrid-synergy.eu/

For Italian speaking people, the Hybrid Synergy Forum is the best place to find info about hybrid cars and all that surrounds them.

Dashboard ergonomics

Nearly all new cars have on-board navigation.

But still many prefer old-style external navigators.

One of the reason is they have better ergonomics: they can be plugged on the windshield so they are in the line of sight while driving.

The new Yaris Hybrid is no exception: the infotainment system is way too low on the cockpit:

With the help of GIMP, I've tried a little redesign:

There's enough room for an higher navigator position, and lower air outlets would help air circulation also.

There's a thread about this on the Hybrid Synergy Forum here.

Yaris Hybrid first mileage tests

Here is my trip to work and back.
It's a 15 minutes, 13 Km trip, something like 3 Km of urban roads at the beginning and the end, and a small town in the middle.
Road is plain, no hills or overpasses: according to wikipedia, my hometown is 9 meters lower than my workplace.
Energy balance is even: battery gauge was at level 3 both at the start and the end.
Here is the trip from work to home:

Minutes -3, -8 and -15 are totally in EV mode.
Minute -15 was spent while exiting from the parking, while during the others I was actually driving.
Average is 4.6 L/100km

And now back from home to work:

First 2 minutes in EV, while driving around home, then again minutes -1, -3, -4, -7, -8 all electric.
Average is 3.5 L/100km

I don't use the ECO-mode nor EV-mode buttons.

Double click

Here's the key:

To lock or unlock doors only one press is required.
I keep all my keys in the same pocket, so while I was searching for my home key, the car lights flashed: the unlock button accidentally was pressed by the other keys rolling in the pocket.
Single click is a bad design choice:
single click -> select
double click -> execute
that's the way on my desktop, that should be the way in my pocket too.