Got a prius in Jan 05. Love car, but the small 10 gal gas tank causes more stops for fuel than a non-hybrid car. Does anyone else find this annoying? Does Toyota have plans to increase size of gas tank? Anyone add an accessory tank?
Huh? First, it's 11.9 gallons, not 10, and I'm typically driving about
450 miles between fuel stops. The Geo Prizm I traded in for the Prius had a 12.1 gallon tank and, at 25 mpg towards the end, I was stopping for gas less than every 300 miles or so. I can drive from here in Jacksonville, FL, to my parents' house in Maryland, some 750 miles, with only one fuel stop.What size gas tank did your previous car have and what kind of mileage were you getting?
My 2005 Prius has a 12 gallon tank and goes 3 times further on a gallon than does my Explorer with it's 17 gallon tank. I add gas to the Prius about half as often as I did with the Explorer. I don't see the problem here, googley.
Which non-hybrid (or as we say, "old broken-down shit") car would that be?
Your Prius should be able to get about 500 miles on a tank.
earle
*It would be nice if the tank capacity was greater. Seems the gas price always rises and then backs down a few weeks later. I'd like to catch it at the second lower dip than during the sharper rise. Might take a month or two to do it though.
Imagine if it could go all summer on a tank when the prices are high and then only require gas when the lower winter prices occur.
B~
If you calculate the difference in actual cost you might decide it is easier not to think about it ;-)
For example, if you drive 15K miles a year at 45 mpg, you are buying about a gallon a day. If the price difference during the wildest swings is 25 cents, you can only save a couple dollars a week. One of the things I appreciate about the Prius is not worrying about the cost of gasoline - it just isn't significant.
Mike
This post makes absolutely no sense. I traded in my Dodge Quad Cab truck that got 13 mpg with a 26 gallon tank in for a 2005 Prius which I love with what you are calling a small 11.9 gallon tank. Guess which one I had to fill up more often?
I'm hearing you! My F350 work truck - manual tranny - has a pair of 15 gallon tanks and makes it 300 miles if I keep the speed down and pray a lot. The devil of it is the company fuel card has a $50 (about 23 gallons) limit per location, so I have to fill it up sometimes twice a day (like today). I don't like to run the tanks below 1/4 if I can avoid it, though, which means switching tanks after about 100 miles and refilling after about 200. Our Prius just keeps going and going....
Mike
causes
Your nuts?
I had a 1999 Nissan Maxima, with 16 gal tank. That car had a maximum range of ~400 miles. With my 04 Prius I'm getting ~500 miles out of 10 gallons. I drive ~100 miles/day, I'm very familiar with the range I get out these cars.
Not sure what you mean by "more fuel" stops. How often? What gas mileage are you getting? The worst mileage I have experienced in my Prius is 42 mpg . As it gets a little more mileage on it and the weather gets warmer, I am averaging 52-53 mpg. The calculated lifetime mpg for 4,000 mi. is now about 50 mpg.
Since I am very conservative, I don't press the gas guage and have always tended to refuel when it hits about 1/4 tank. This means my refills on the Prius range from 300 to 450 miles. I have had 19 cars in my lifetime and none have beat that (I also fueled them at about 1/4 tank).
My worst was an Olds Cutlass that was a good car but had really bad kidneys. On road trips I could seldom go much more than 100 miles until I was looking for gas. Terribly irritating then but now it wouldn't be too bad as after a
100 mile leg I looking for a place to empty my tank, not to fill it.By the way, I would rather not have a larger tank on the Prius as I wouldn't want to take away the weight from the maximum load it should carry. A second
10 gal tank would hold 60 lbs of gasoline (plus the weight of the tank and plumbing). Don't think stretching the range to 800 miles is worth that loss.Thank to everyone for your inputs. I guess my problem is that I share car with wife and daughter, but I always seem to get stuck filling up. Most fillups are between 9.5- 10 gal (when the gas gauge is blinking) I'm afraid of going dry even though the tank is
11.9gal. Has anyone in the group ever run out of fuel?ak
Yea I've run out of gas. Nice thing is that the car will keep going on electric. The battery will go down very fast, so get to a gas station ASAP. Also the speed will be reduced. I was on the highway ~65MPH when the gas engine stopped, I was able to continue moving at about ~35MPH. I got off at the next exit and stopped at the first station, all told I traveled maybe 2 miles after I hit empty.
One thing I've learned about the Prius, do not gauge that amount of gas in your tank by the distance traveled on that tank. Seems the littlest things, such as weather, will affect the mileage significantly. For example, I use the Prius to commute approximately 50 miles each way, every freaking day. I'm the only driver of the car. Yesterday morning I filled up, and according to the real time MPG calculation I averaged 51.4MPG over my 100 mile drive yesterday. Today in Boston it's raining cats and dogs, along with a nice 15mph+ wind, on the first half of my commute the MPG for this weeks tank has dropped below
48MPG, and I had roughly 4 miles of creeping in traffic which raised the average since I was on electric mostly. Another thing I've learned is that the car calculated MPG is usually way off from reality. I've been keeping track and usually the car calculation is higher than a manual calculation of (total miles) / (gallons) per tank.
Rain and wind will adversely effect the milage of any car. Extra rolling resistance and estra wind resistance = more power needed.
The milage meter is accurate on most Prius. The disparity you see may be due to the flexible bladder in the gas tank. The bladder does not stretch as much when cold, so the gas tank effectively changes size from one fill to the next. Check your milage over 7 or 8 fills, and you will find it's not too far off.
There are lots of posts you can find on the subject on google.
Dan
I have had my Package 6 since Feb. And I have NEVER put more than 10.5 gallons into it. I always get more than 400 Miles per tank, and I have gotten as much as 475. No I don't get the mileage that many other Prius drivers get. I am not complaining. I get more than 30 MPG better than my last car (98 Blazer) and I couldn't be happier!
The not so funny thing about it is, the very first tank I filled was the very last time I paid less than $2.00 a gallon. I do NOT expect to ever pay less than $2.00 a gallon ever again. At this rate, I save over $100 a month in fuel. My return on investment should be verey good comparitively. Has any one else noticed how much people are paying for used Prisii??? I looked at used ones when I bought, the best I could find was an '04 with 25K Miles and they wanted a grand total of $1000 less than I payed for my new one.
Oh What a Feeling!
-John
What amazes me is that when we bought our Prius 2 1/2 years ago the buzz was that we would never recover the cost of the hybrid system at $1.50 per gallon (compared to 35 mpg for a similar conventional car) and that the resale value was very low.
No matter - this car is still a joy to drive and has been completely reliable.
Mike
I am a new Prius owner (just got it June 11th). I bought the car with 5 miles on it and a full tank of gas. I drove it 323 miles and filled up with 3 squares remaining. My fill-up was 7.4 gallons and cost me $15.75. I calculated that my MPG was 43.65 MPG. So far my second tank doesn't seem to be lasting as long, and I don't think I've driven it any differently. The first tank I drove with the A/C on frequently (it's hot here in Florida). I am doing nothing different with the second tank. Is the lower MPG due to the fact that I'm still in the 'break-in' period, or am I doing something else wrong? Does my car need maintenance or a software upgrade?
Oh, don't be too concerned about your tankful to tankful MPG variation. I've had my 2004 Prius since mid September, also in Florida (Jacksonville), and while my overall MPG has been pretty steady at between 43 and 44, my individual tankfuls have been all over the place, from high 30s to over 50, and most of the time it's for the same type of driving.
Hey, I am in Jacksonville too! Small world! I wonder how some people are getting closer to 50 MPG though. Is it a climate thing or a driving habit thing?
Thanks for the info. See you on the road!
Cheers, Tim
Did you always fill up using the same fill nozzle? I have found that no two will click off at the same level. Depending on the nozzle used, the time its takes for my fuel indicator to drop from full to 9/10's can vary from over an hour to maybe 15 minutes of highway driving. This can reflect a difference of over a gallon variation in the fuel level in the tank. Topping off can make the variation's even worse.
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