High Speed Prius Trip

It's my fault. I used to sneak over at night and put a couple of quarts in your tank just so you could go around and brag. Ever wonder why when you were out of town your mileage sucked? Now you know. I couldn't find you. LOL!!!!

Sounds like me with my Dad's VW bug.

My Dad kept accurate records of his mpg in a little book.

Smart ass me would take the car and unhook the speedometer and 'try' to refill the tank to the appropriate level after a joy ride.

When he got 100mpg....yours truly was BUSTED....LOL

I bought a new '07 Prius about a week ago, and my typical average for combined city-highway driving is only around 38 MPG. I have gotten the MPG up to slightly over 40 MPG by coasting on slight downhill grades. I read about other Prius owners getting 45-55 MPG, and that makes me disappointed in my new Prius MPG experience. We have ethanol (10%) blended gas here in Minnesota, and I've been running the cabin heat in

25-40 degree weather ... two factors that might lower my MPG. MrB

You should have bought a Corolla!

not too bad. my echo only gets 40 !

You're reading about people who (a) live in mild climates where it never gets too cold (run the engine to keep cabin and catalytic converter warm) or too hot (engine runs to recharge the battery to run the electrical AC) and where people drive 10 mph in start and stop traffic.

You're also reading posts from freakos who exists solely to eke that next tenth of a mile per gallon out of their machine. They go to incredible lengths, abnormal lengths, freako lengths to get in everyone's way so they can play their dashboard video game in traffic without any regard to the world around them.

In other words, the Prius was designed by the marketing team for LA traffic, where they could get the most marketing bang for the buck.

Ignore those people. That's la-la-land. 30mpg in winter, 40mpg in mild weather in normal driving--that's about what you'll get when you just drive it like a car.

If you're disappointed, it's because your expectations were set by freakos.

Hi Bear, Don't mind the first two responses, as they are noted Prius dissers. I bought mine at the start of the year, in NJ.

There are two factors in your mileage thus far. One is that it is still cold out. We were getting around 40 at first during the first week of January, and now that it is warmed up we get around 53. Ambient temperature has a _lot_ to do with the mileage. You are likely calling for heat in your cab. The only place that it gets heat from is from the engine and the only way that it can generate the heat in the engine is to run it. So it runs it moreso than it will when you are not calling for heat, and uses up gas doing so.

It also takes longer for the emissions stuff to heat up and the engine runs to get it hot and maintain it hot. One of the prime directives of this car is for it to be an AT-PZEV (Advanced Technology - Partial Zero Emission Vehicle) at all times. This means that it will do what it needs to do to keep the catalytic converter hot, and in the cold this means using a bit more gas to do it.

The second factor is that it is still very new. All of the moving parts are still very tight and will loosen up over the first few thousand miles, allowing for increased MPG. The tires are also new (they break in too), and are likely in need of some more air. Go check them - in the cold they tend to lose pressure moreso than when it is hot out. 42 front and 40 rear is what a lot of us have come to recommend for the Prius. You want them to be harder so they have less rolling resistance. After 5000 miles mine are wearing evenly still.

10% Ethanol will also sap MPG. The EPA numbers were done with 100% gas (and ideal conditions, unrealistic speeds, unrealistic climate and gentle accelerations). The 10% ethanol is about 3.4% less efficient, so you lose 1-2 MPG right there.

Bear - Go to this website:

is a Prius owners manual not written by Toyota, but by owners. Fabulous stuff here. It has a graph on an owners' MPG over a couple of years and it shows it going from 42 in winter to 55 in the summer. Loads of other information on the car and how to drive it, how it works and what to realistically expect. Also go here: is a website that explains how it works. Understand that what you now have is a different kind of car than folks are used to. You will need to recalibrate your foot from NormalFoot to PriusFoot. There is a trick to get it to run more on electricity (lift foot then lightly depress). It will take a while to get used to this and the other stuff. The CVT transmission takes a bit of getting used to as well.

Let us know how you fare and come at us with questions. Tomes

No, he doesn't. The Prius acts and drives, from the driver's perspective, like every other car out there. Toyota did a fantastic job of making that happen.

No driver has to change his behavior one bit in order to realize the fuel savings of a Prius.

Only if you want to be a fuel-saving zealot would you change your behavior.

And guess what? People who drive non-hybrid cars can change their behaviors similarly and realize the SAME type of fuel savings!

There is no such thing as "normalfoot" and "Priusfoot". That's just lunacy put out by the freakos who want to eke out the last tenth of a mile per gallon. Funny thing--those freakos didn't have a "gas saving foot" before they bought a Prius, so what's their problem?

In de-acceleration, Prius moves forward only as far as momentum will take it. Typical car de-accelerates forward under power and momentum. Big difference between the two.

If foot slips off accelerator pedal, speed will not be maintained. Foot slips off gas pedal, car continues at present speed for 1/2 mile. Big difference between the two.

The sensation of acceleration is different and somewhat lacking the subtle hints of noise and visual cues you normally take for granted while driving a typical car.

Punch the accelerator for passing and you may feel pressure on your chest. Punch the gas pedal for passing and your head gets thrown forward for a fraction of a second and then thrown back. It's this exaggeration that makes drivers think their non-hybrid is faster than it's counterpart.

Indeed there is a Priusfoot whether or not you believe it.

Thanks for being helpful. I'm trying to better understand the PriusFoot concept. Is it more than just the opposite of a lead foot?

I tried to make more of coasting the Prius on slight grades, and that seems to help boost the displayed MPG. I actually got 47 MPG on my 22 mile trip home last night. Interestingly, when I drove in to work today in 35 degree weather, the ICE started as soon as the Prius was powered up. In the first two miles, my computerized MPG dropped from 47 to 45 .. and was just over 46 MPG when I arrived at work. Maybe I'm a bit obsessive about checking MPG, but in fact that's a major reason I bought this car.

I'm hoping the MPG will improve in a month or two ... after I have a couple of thousand miles on the car, and the weather warms up into the

50s and 60s. I'll check tire pressure, too.

I should have a couple of inches or more of snow to drive in shortly. A few reports suggest the Prius is ot great in snow, but one of the reasons I bought it is the fact that my Prius has stability and traction controls, and the Honda Civic I was considering as an alternative does not offer these features. Specs indicate the Prius has a ground clearance of 6", which is an issue in heavy snow. MrB

OK, here is my take on PriusFoot: {I am going to tell you to use the video display as a tool here - do this only glancingly and do not get caught up in the moving picture so that you become a dangerous driver}

What you want to do is coax the computer to change from using the gas engine in certain situations into using the electric motor. This will work when you are going down a hill or on a flat road. It will not work going up a hill. When you reach your constant speed, lift your foot up off of the gas for an instant, and then replace it ever so lightly - just enough that you are now not slowing the car by drift. This will engage the electric motor. You can tell if you are successful by looking at the 'energy' display screen. This really cool screen tells you which way all the power is going between the gas engine, the electric motor and the wheels, in both directions. What you want to see is a change from the (blue I think) power coming from the gas engine to (yellow) power coming from the batteries/electric motor. When you coast you will see the power going to the batteries or no power movement at all. When you press on the gas pedal just right, you want to see the display show power coming from the batteries only. This will give you forward thrust without turning on the engine.

It takes a while to get good at this, so be not discouraged. It is a different thing than just the opposite of LeadFoot. After a while you will be able to know if you are doing it right just by using the main bar graph screen. When it goes to 100 MPG you are in this mode. It is not coasting as in old type cars, it is finding the electric mode.

The ICE gas engine will always start up once it has pumped the antifreeze back into the engine to heat up the emissions stuff. MPG always will drop a bit before you get it back. Happens every trip. It will run with less duration when the ambient temperature warms up, but it will always run this way.

Do this now.

Our Prius does not have traction control and we have found that it does not do well in the snow. I was attributing it to the tires. The wife took the Sienna in the snow instead of the new Prius. The ground clearance is an issue in the snow if you are driving in ruts with the snow piled up between the wheel lanes. When we had our one big snow 6 inches maybe?) I just ran up and down the driveway in the Jeep to pack it down, which also built it up a bit in the center. When we took the Prius out it was scraping the snow at the front dam annoyingly. No harm done, but it was a chagrin.

Have you read the links yet? If not do so, lots of good stuff there. Tomes

I forgot to mention, as I just realized in the Warm Air thread, that I had a Cold Air Intake on my Tercel, and it DID make a 4-6MPG diffrence on fuel economy!

Yep, and when Elmo's business finally gets one for him, he will figure it out too despite his predispositions about something that really is different. One needs to drive it in order to realize this, and drive it a lot, not just a few times.

In addition to the correct stuff Mark notes, there is a third and critical factor. Beyond just the difference between engine braking and coasting (I coast all the time in my manual transmissioned Jeep), there is forward thrust provided when you use PriusFoot to engage the electric motor only. One rests the foot lightly on the pedal to do this and it is an art to get it right. THAT is PriusFoot, not just being a gentle driver - not at all. This is where the big MPG boost kicks in for me. Tomes

I firmly believe that every car should have an instantaneous and trip/ cumulative MPG meter in them, like the Prius has. Then everyone can better learn how to drive any car for better efficiency (higher MPG). Without such a readout, it is difficult to learn better driving behaviours.

I've been driving it for a month. I'm not a freako looking to eke anything out of the car. I drive it like normal, and let the engineering under the hood take care of business.

Works out great.

No.

Whatever you do, don't go out in traffic and play your dashboard video game like these freakos want you to. Drive normally, drive sensibly, and get on with your life--and don't become a (barely) rolling obstacle to the rest of traffic.

Which is not at ALL "required" in order to drive the car. Unfortunately, you're making it out like one MUST drive like this.

That's lunacy.

Glad to hear it!

Well, what you chopped out conveniently was the part where you can get a whole lot more out of the car. Nothing is required, and it was never said so. Please get a grip on this, thanks. Tomes