I started out using B, and getting used to feathering my deceleration, but I read a piece from Porshe saying that it is more efficient to glide than to decelerate and re-accelerate, so they don’t include B on their hybrids.
Don’t let them fool you; it’s more work and development time and they are saving money by not including it.
Think about it this way, in B mode there’s a “coast” section of the pedal, at around 15-20% depending on speed and some other factors. This is where the tachometer will be right in the middle between power and charge.
If your the kind of driver where you can only go from anything beyond this coast section to off the pedal completely, yes you will mis-gague the stopping distance and have to accelerate to get to where you wanted to stop. But this is dumb, most people won’t do this except the worst drivers, and it’ll be really jerky feeling no different than the people that are hard on/off the brakes.
But any point below this coast point isn’t acceleration, it’s reducing the regenerative breaking force. So the pedal at 3%, 5%, or 10% won’t be using any power, they are simply regenerating less energy to extend your stopping distance.
If you were feathering your deceleration while in B mode, as long as you weren’t pressing it so that the tachometer enters the power section, you are using no additional power at all, and it’s no different than feathering the breaks.
The real gain you get with B mode is that the brakes themselves will rarely engage, whereas in D mode you can engage them much more easily by simply pressing the brakes too hard, and any brake usage is wasted energy. And because you get used to how quickly\slowly you can decelerate in B mode most people tend to decelerate sooner and less aggressively more often, both of which increases range by small amounts.
But in reality, drive whichever you prefer. If you are driving exactly the same in either mode the range differences are negligible to non-existent. But most people will drive ever so more conservative in B mode by design.
And I’d argue it’s ever so slightly safer, based on the fact you get instant deceleration the moment you let off the pedal. So in instances where you need to lift off and brake hard, there’s always a small delay from shifting to gas brake, and even the 200-300 milliseconds it might take the speed down by 2-3 miles, which might not sound like much but could mean stopping several feet sooner, or hitting that kid at 13 mph instead of 16 mph; every little bit helps.