Prius driving tips for a new user?

In short: leave early :) If you're not anxious to get somewhere, your driving will have less acceleration / braking which kills efficiency (in any car, not just Prius)

The novelty will wear off soon and you'll just drive normally and probably judge more by the sound of the engine (or lack thereof) than the display.

I don't believe it's ALWAYS necessary. Just because someone in front of you is in a hurry, it does not mean you also have top burn rubber. You'll catch up with the car in front of you at the top of the speed limit anyhow (+10MPH most of the time ;) , what difference do 10 seconds make?

Just let the car decide. Since it's a hybrid, the energy isn't wasted (well, not all of it anyhow). There's always an uphill after that down hill and then the stored energy will come handy. Switching to neutral is NOT a good idea.

Cheers!

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Sure, for good MPG avoid the use of the traction/HV battery, it only has about a 70% storage efficiency of watt-hours out to watt-hours in, and the worst thing for MPG you can do is to try to force the car to run on battery and then end up with the ICE running just to recharge it. One of the oldest Prius tricks is to "Pulse and glide", this means instead of going a constant speed you alternate between "Pulse" which is accelerating with no arrows to or from the HV battery on the energy monitor screen followed by "Glide" which is coasting with the ICE (engine) off and no arrows at all on the screen. To do both you have to feather the accelerator pedal position. When accelerating as you apply more pressure the arrows will start as going to the HV, then they disappear, then closer to WOT the arrows will be from the HV. You want the sweet spot in between. To glide you let all the way off the pedal, wait for the ICE to shut off, then reapply just enough pressure to make the arrows disappear. Note that above 42MPH the ICE crank never stops turning, though the fuel injectors do stop pulsing.

ICE= Internal Combustion Engine.

Beyond that, maintain your tire pressures like a hawk, and try 42PSI front,

After oil changes make sure the level on the dipstick is between add and full, preferably not on full, and NEVER over full. There is a ~1.5 quart difference between add and full, the car only holds 3.5 quarts after a change, and lots of oil change places including some of the dealers see the

Rather than coasting, get used to pressing the gas pedal *just enough* to maintain speed. If you are climbing a short grade, back off a little and lose a few MPH on the uphill. Just don't make yourself a 'rolling roadblock' for cars behind you who just want to drive at the speed limit. That will have the same effect as coasting, more or less. I don't know what the 2008 display shows (we have a 2010) but on our car you can use a bar graph to keep the engine from running more than is needed.

This is a good start but you'll learn a lot more if you can get a ScanGauge II to instrument the car. Be sure and get the one that is XGAUGE programmable since these can also provide diagnostic codes. But three built-in gauges will give three pieces of information needed to drive efficiently:

engine coolant - the Prius is very engine temperature dependent and the simple rule is below 70C, it is an ordinary car and above 70C it become very efficient. So try to minimize higher power demands until the coolant reaches 70C.

engine rpm - the engine efficiency of your model NHW20 is somewhat sensitive to rpm with anything under 2,200-2,600 being very efficient and above that less so. Under higher power settins, 3,200 rpm and above, the car is less efficient.

gallons per hour - unlike any other gauge, this gives a direct readout of the rate of fuel consumption. Acceleration can still be good with fuel consumption rates under two gallons per hour. But the car really shines when fuel consumption is in the 0.60-0.70 range or lower.

When the engine is warming up to 70C, I maximize used of "N" so the engine will turn over at the minimum fuel consumption rate. But once it reaches 70C, I only use "N" if I need to coast a longer distance. Otherwise, I just used cruise control and pay attention to traffic.

My web page shows my approach to the problem:

. . .

I use 'route planning' since the Prius does not suffer the mileage hit in stop and go traffic that a regular car suffers. So often I'll drive the access road instead of the higher speed (and sometimes accident blocked) limited access road. For the first mile or so, I'm driving through my neighborhood at ~25 mph while the engine warms up. Also, I'll take a short-cut with lights rather than the longer, light-free but higher speed route. This type of route planning takes my commute from just over 15 minutes to about 22 minutes but since I'm listening to my podcasts, I'm happy.

BTW, the reason I prefer "N" versus trying to moderate the pedal is my eyes are looking out the windshield, not at the instrumentation in the car. But then I grew up with manual transmission cars so shifting is second nature:

There are lots of ways of achieving similar results so try them and see what works for you.

Bob Wilson

I don't know what rate you used to accelerate at but I can tell you that you don't have to accelerate all that slow to get good mileage. Accelerating slowly lowers the rate of output, but it must be maintained for a longer time to get up to speed. Slowing gradually,coasting down, makes far more difference. You don't want to waste the kinetic energy by turning it to heat in the brakes. And while regenerative braking recovers some energy, it to wastes a fair amount as heat.

Depends on you plan :) In the "pulse and glide" technique you don't want to charge the battery, idea being that you never get as much back as you put in. An alternate method I use is to let off the gas to shut the engine down, then gently step on the pedal to maintain 35 mph with the electric motor. When the battery runs down the engine will start and recharge it. The idea here is that the engine uses gasoline just to idle. When running on electric alone you save not only the gas that would be moving the car but the gas wasted idling as well. When the engine starts you have to replace the energy that was used to keep the car rolling, but not the energy that would have kept the engine idling. It ends up giving better mpg than puttering along with the engine running all the time, but not quite as good as pulse and glide. On the plus side you maintain a near constant speed.

That's very true. I've been late for work a few times, and so was pushing it hard, albeit in Eco mode so I had better throttle control. I still averaged 49MPG, instead of the usual low to mid 50s. I've heard that it will still get in the low forties running hard in Power mode.

I also use the battery with the engine off, when I know that the engine will have to run soon to climb a grade or accelerate faster. The current average on the display, over several tanks of gas, is 55MPG.

I was speaking of the getting up to speed part only. Keep the eventual speed the same with the gentle planned slowing and the acceleration will have almost no effect on you mpg. The shorter time spent accelerating makes up for the higher rate of fuel use while accelerating.

On Aug 9, 11:19 am, liu wrote:

1. The most important aspect of high fuel efficiency driving is to give yourself enough time to drive to where you are going.
2. Hybrid usually donot achieve their rated EPA fuel efficiencies until after they are driven over 15 minutes at summertime temperatures or over 30 minutes in the wintertime temperatures - this is because there is a warmup penality to start up the engine and warm up the exhaust emisssions system. Whenever possible combine your driving trips so that that most of your trips are longer than 30 minutes or 7 miles - this will automatically increase your fuel efficiency. During the winter time, you can shorten this warmup penality for nonhighway/urban/suburban stop-n-go driving trips if the Prius intake grills are blocked and/or if you install a engine blockheater. During the winter, if the coolant temperature drops too low because the gasoline engine was automatically turned off ( because the Prius is at a stop light or because you are gliding for a long time) the Prius engine will go on automatically to warmup the coolant (which keeps the exhaust emission system at the proper operational temperatures). You want to avoid having the Prius engine automatically cycling on to warm up the coolant because it will cause your MPGs to drop like a rock. So you need to watch the temperature of the coolant when doing stop and go driving in colder temperatures - unfortunately the Prius doesnot have a temperature gauge so you need a ScangaugeII or something like it to check if the coolant is getting cold. Before the coolant gets too cold, I will pulse/run the gasoline engine more frequently just to to keep the coolant from getting too cold in the winter time.
3. Daniel who wants to know is right to focus on the tire pressure

- the Prius fuel efficiency very sensitive to tire pressure. This is because the tire's rolling resistance decreases with higher pressure. The Prius will coast/glide longer on momentum without additional energy if it has a lower rolling resistance. Lower rolling resistant depends on how smooth the road is and the tire rolling resistance. You can buy Low Rolling Resistant (LRR) Tires or you can overinflate a tire near its maximum sidewall pressure setting to lower its rolling resistance. In addition, as the tread of a tire wears off its rolling resistance decreases (but its stopping power decreases as well). Overinflating the tires decreases the rolling resistance by making the tire more ridge - which can make for a harsher ride and a tire pressures over the maximum sidewall pressure can reduce the traction/gripping power of the tire. When the road surface is rough - an overinflated tire will not absorb the irregularities but *bounce* and rolling resistance maybe worst than if the tire was as a lesser pressure which would absorb road surface irregularities and not *bounce.* If the road surface is rough or grooved due to construction then you'll be better off with the tire pressure setting listed on the inside of the driver's door panel (manufacturer's suggested tire psi setting). The advantage of the LRR is that they should do well regardless of the road surface condition at their recommended tire pressure setting. Driving on a smooth well kept road helps fuel efficiency.

1. Avoid using more than 1/2 the high voltage(HV) battery power . When the HV voltage battery is nearly depleted the Prius gasoline engine will automatically go on to recharge the HV battery to push the power level back up to a safe level -- this in turn will push the MPG down because that's the least fuel efficient way to charge the Prius HV battery. Essentially this drives back to what Daniel who wants to know asserted - don't depend on the electric motors to drive the Prius to increase the MPGs - instead focus on efficiently using the vehicle's kinetic energy-momentum. when there are no arrows on the Energy Monitor Display - then no gas or electricity is being expended and the Prius is moving on its own momentum ( any object in motion will stay in that particular motion unless acted by another force).
2. The Prius gets the best fuel efficiency if its running between

1. Cleanmpg.com is for hypermiling its the best place to get detailed instructions on how to hypermile Priuschat.com is for Prius devotees and those who want to pimp their rides Youtube.com has some very good video on how to drive a Prius efficiently
2. I've read it is possible to use Neutral in a glide to decrease internal resistance and extend a glide phase- its an advance P&G technique. On priuschat F8L was asking that very same thing under "extreme hypermiling" the problem is not that your momentum/kinetic energy will eventually go to zero but that it the road section ahead has a much higher energy cost per mph than the current road section you are on. Each road section is like a store where you can buy mph for X amount of energy. Some stores are overpriced and other stores are cheap. So the best tactic is to "Buy low, sell high." Simply put - the most energy efficient route is to create speed when the energy cost to create speed is low then loose speed when the energy cost to create speed is high.

HTH

Walter Lee

Hi, I got my Prius tuned at 112,000 miles, new plugs, filters, and got another 5 MPG right off the bat. Keeping them maintained is important.