Well!, after driving for almost 20 years (4+ years Dodge Colt E & 15+ Years Toyota Camry Dx 1991 - 238,000+ miles!) I have finally ran out of gas for the first time while driving, In our New Prius no less!
This happened at the 901 odo mark (2nd tank of gas for new baby) while on way to home from grocery shopping. Took the Scenic back roads to avoid very heavy traffic on Highway and Secondary road route (only needed to go about 5 miles). While passing the Pelham Public Golf course that very RED triangle with the exclamation point lit up the dash.
Unfortunately, the battery reserves where only about 1/4 to 1/3 and we were able to get maybe less than a mile further along. Got on the cell and called 311 to ask for assistance. A police cruiser came by at the same time and offered assistance. The police asked "Is that a Prius?" and then chuckled.
He asked if I could position the car more onto the meridian but I could not move the car (lock down mode? - need to ck the manual). I got in to close the windows and once the key fob was in the dash the engine kicked on! (residual gas, hmm...). I backed up the car until it was completely on the grassy area and the engine shut down and would not move again.
The police were nice enough to drive us to a gas station in City Island where I got a gas container & purchased 2 gallons of gas. The cruiser drove us back to the Prius and we thanked the officer for his help ( I bet passing motorist were getting a chuckle watching me gas the Prius!).
Drove a couple of miles to the Shell gas station near our abode and filled up with about 8 gallons of gas so the car got it's full 11.9 gallons.
My wife was not too upset with me at the time (although she did not pack any chips to go with my sandwich for lunch today - she did pack hers, thought!) and the people at work were having their little laughs
- the women did not show me ANY sympathy (sigh).
So, I learned my little lesson, and will gas up the Prius when it first starts blinking that last gas icon on the dash and not wait a couple of days (It was flashing at me last Friday!).
Now, the strange thing about all of this is that when I got the blinking icon from our first tank (and ALSO waited a couple of days to fill up) the odo was around 494 miles. I gassed up and the pump stopped at 7.5 gal of gas. This showed that I still had over 4 gallons of gas left in the tank so I was very impressed when I did the math (over 65mpg in mixed highway/local driving). The dash, thought, did not show this figure. It was showing about 49.5mpg at the time (hmm...).
Driving on the 2nd tank of gas the #10 gas icon on the dash blinked off almost immediately. The gas gauge icons continued in this fashion of rapid gas usage (even thought the mpg average being displayed on the screen was showing 51.5mpg on average for this 2nd tank of gas). I ran out of gas before reaching 400 miles on the trip odo so that would make the mpg be around 33.6. Weird
I will continue to monitor the Prius Gas usage over the next 5-10 tanks of fill ups and may post a follow up report.
Vic