41 MPG city Fusion Hybrid more efficient than Camry Hybrid's 33 MPG (2025 Update)

So, what magic process charges up the battery after?

Sounds like a plan! Even if gas was $10 a gallon, I can't see myself buying one of those sewing machines on wheels.

Probably plugging it into a recharger which uses nasty old power from some coal burning power plant.

Well --- yes and no. It takes energy from somewhere to power the AC, but the standard line for the past decade or so has been that the AC uses less additional energy to run with the windows closed than the amount of energy required to overcome the additional drag caused by driving with the windows open (natural AC).

I keep careful gas mileage records. It seems to me that if A/C really used a lot of extra fuel, I should be able to it reflected in my records - and I don't. I own 2006 Nissan Frontier. Most of my trips are a repeative 300 mile round trip with maybe 50 miles of local travel thrown in. The truck now has 75k miles. I looked at the average fuel economy by month. You would think if A/C had a major effect on fuel economy, I would see my lowest fuel economy in the summer. But I don't, in fact I show the highest fuel economy in the summer months. And since I rarely ride around with the windows open, winter or summer, the difference in air resistance due to the window being down isn't a factor. I get similar results for my Ford Fusion, except I always show my best fuel economy in December, but this is becasue I always do a lot of highway traveling in the Fusion in December. The rest of the year, the Fusion is mostly used for running around town - mostly mixed urban driving. I never drive with the windows down in this car either.

The engineer in me says the A/C has to consume engergy and lower my fuel economy. My only conclusion is that the actual power comsumption of the A/C system is very small compared to the overall energy usage of the vehicle and that the effect on fuel economy is masked by other factors (changing fuel blends, changes in rolling resistance related to temperature, changes in driving patterns, etc.). I assume that if I drove around in the summer with the A/C off and the windows shut, I'd get even better summer fuel economy - but I am not going to do it....

The Mythbuster guys addresse this topic (at least twice) but I never like their methodology. They drove to slow to make aerodynamic an important factor, so the windows up / windows down results were flawed. Also, they deliberately set the A/C to the coldest position to try and force it to run continuosly, which is not a real world condition (they had people in the truck in coats becasue it was so cold).

Ed

Heat energy loss during the winter is why you use more then. That's what I've read anyway, and it makes sense to me.

--Vic

There are two things that may be reducing your winter mileage. 1) The engine is less efficient when it is cold, reducing mileage. 2) There is a winter blend of gasoline with chemicals to reduce smog. These chemicals also reduce mileage.

Jeff

the answer remains yes, and I'm not sure what you were trying to say there that had anything to do with the fact that it takes energy to run the AC--and that energy comes from GASOLINE.

And the GASOLINE that provides energy to run the AC is not driving the wheels forward, but it IS being used. Ergo, fewer miles driven per gallon of gas used.

A/C does use energy, but in reality, it's not all that much. The wife's old Beretta has one of those fuel economy things on the digital dash... and when the AC worked, it used about a 1/2 to 3/4 of a mpg on the highway.

My home AC unit is 40A @ 240V, so we're talking about 9600W, or about

I still think that current cars are way inefficient and even though I'm not in the market for a $100k Tesla or a Prius, I think shaking up the status quo is a good thing. That said, I'm putting a cam in my Trans Am this year - I want to get kicked out of the drag strip for doing 11.48 without a rollcage... :)

Ray

Driving.

"ray"...

Only if you are sitting in traffic and not driving along normally recharging the batteries. It reclaims plenty enough when driving along to make the electric AC use not affect MPG at all. In other words, it reclaims more than it uses anyway. Tomes

Thanx all for your input. We found a mustang shop that is willing to fix the valve problem finally!

Steve

That's what I said.

Tomes saying that "it reclaims more than it uses anyway" means Tomes thinks that the Prius is a perpetual motion machine (or worse--is an actual generator of power).

Tomes doesn't understand the concepts of thermodynamics. Unfortunately, Toyota marketing is happy to have people like Tomes on their side.

There are millions of "greenies", i.e. DEMONrats and other LIEbrawls who think that naively, ignorantly, whatever.

"Elmo P. Shagnasty" ...

No, no, no.... Hang on and think this through with me for a bit. I tend to think at things from different angles [no bong required .

First, we agree that all the energy comes from gas, no problem. All the Prius is doing is managing quite well the energy sourced from that gas. It uses the gas to move the car. Then, and only then, it reclaims some of the wasted energy and stuffs it into the traction batteries. Now, the issue is what it does with that reclaimed energy. One of the things it uses it for is to run the AC.

When one drives the Prius, one uses the engine plenty enough [along with regenerative braking] to stuff charge into the battery. It stuffs plenty of electrons in there because it is designed pretty well to do that. It's going in there anyway, regardless of how it then subsequently uses those negatively charged critters up again. Sometimes it uses it for propulsion, sometimes for the radio and lights, sometimes for the AC. My position here is that it stuffs enough into the batteries during normal driving that it does not need to run the ICE _extra_ [and extra is the important word here] to recharge the batteries. Extra. In my Prius it never discharges the traction battery enough to turn on the ICE solely because the battery is low during normal driving. It only will do that if I am sitting still and running electric stuff because the car is not stuffing the battery while not moving, so only then does it use the ICE solely for recharging.

Therefore, running the AC _under normal conditions_ does _not_ make the gas engine run more versus not running the AC.

When I say that "it reclaims more than it uses anyway" I mean that it could use more reclaimed energy than it chooses to use, and has spare to run the AC without engaging the ICE just for that. It could use more of the energy in the batteries and get slightly higher MPG, but Toyota chose to manage it the way it does for battery longevity reasons. Also, it does it does sometimes waste energy on purpose when the battery is 'full' by spinning the engine with no gas feed. This is reclaimed energy that is not used. Tomes

Yes, it does.

The AC is very power hungry. Simple regeneration isn't sufficient to keep it fed.

Agreed, having the battery in the middle along with the Prius transmission and engine control system does make a difference in how much gasoline energy is used to keep the AC going. At idle, other cars run the engine and throw away 95% of the energy in heat just to keep the AC compressor going, while the Prius with its battery buffer can run the engine just enough to keep the battery up to snuff and then shuts off, and the battery keeps the AC going a dribble of electrons at a time. That's a much more efficient use of the gasoline engine--but still, the gasoline engine feeds the AC.

Agreed to all of them, but: the HSD with its big battery buffer uses the gasoline energy *more* efficiently than a car that's running the engine just sitting there, expending 99.9% of its energy as heat just to keep the radio on.

Ummmm....let me think about this.....

The transmission is actually SIMPLER than a conventional automatic transmission--by far. Have you ever looked into it, or are you (as usual) making random, wild-ass assumptions?

It would be interesting to delve into it and discover the FACTS about how much the HSD transmission weighs vs. how much a conventional hydraulic auto trans weighs. Were I to put a dollar on it, I'd bet that dollar on the HSD transmission weighing a noticeable amount less.

Ah, there is no reasoning with LIEbrawls. To them, it "feels" good, buying an overpriced little tin box. To them, the laws of physics mean dick all. Also, the laws of economics, in most cases. Witness the crazed DEMONrats/Liebrawls spewing out pork "stimuli".