What does "Cruising Range" actually mean?

warning light. it's just an approximation based on past average mpg's. then you have a couple more gallons, but fill up at the beep, if not sooner.

 

If I'm driving in my local area, I wait for the beep and flashing last peep then give myself a 50 mile safe range to fill up within. I've yet to put a full 10 gallons in using this method so feel pretty confident about not running my 11.9 gallon tank empty but it does make my wife nervous every time.

 

right.

 

IMO neither.

My experience is that with MY Prius, I can easily drive to "Cruising Range" or Distance to Empty..is at zero, and still have about 2 gallons ( a little less) left.

So I "wake up" when the last blip blinks and beeps....but only casually start looking for a gas station once I reach Zero on the Distance To Empty.

I would NOT recommend this as everyday operation, but actually my last tank, I had been averaging 52+ mpg, and just for kicks wanted to reach the fabled 500 mile tank. So I actually (not my normal operation)...drove to Distance to Empty Zero...and about 20 miles beyond, reaching 500 miles on the tank.

According to the pump at the gas station, even on this pushed tank, the fill up was 10.1 gallons..which with a capacity of 11.9 gallons means I had just under 2 gallons left.

I don't normally do this...as why put any risk of running empty into your life?

But I find cruising range and distance to empty to be a pretty conservative marker of fuel available. The Prius MPG even in the depths of winter is so good that even at DTE Zero, this usually means I have driven 400+ miles on the tank easily...

I don't panic...I know I have breathing room...but the end of cruising range is when I casually start looking for a place to refill.

PS.

My last pip starts blinking and I get the rather vague single warning beep routinely way BEFORE the DTE or cruising range reaches Zero.

 

My "flashing pip" comes on when the system figures I have 25 miles left to go on my tank. Sounds about right.

The distance to empty and "cruising range" are all estimates based on average numbers. When full, my "cruising range" is estimated to be 600 miles. This is spot on for a Prius averaging 50 mpg and using the whole tank. How fast it goes down is based on fuel level. If you go 100 miles but only use 1/2 the expected gas, the cruising range should still reflect how much range you have on the gas that is left presuming average fuel consumption. If you consume gas faster than this, it will always adjust based on fuel level.

The distance to empty display adjusts more in real time. It knows how much gas you have and how fast you are using it and projects based on your current average (so I figured). If you start doing better and that impacts your distance to empty, it won't drop the numbers down until things balance out.

 

I know we are looking at two different area's for Cruising Range...and Distance To Empty.

But I have always thought they were actually the same gauge. At least on my Prius the Cruising Range and Distance to Empty is always the exact same number. I've never seen them differ.

 

Well, the "distance to empty" (the car with the arrows pointing to the gas pump) shows 615 miles when I first pull away from a fill up. Just confirmed it today.

I would expect both numbers are derived from the same calculation.

 

Is "would expect" something like assume? Have you ever found software that always does what you expect?

 

Life used to be simpler. With my parent's '58 Beetle, remaining gas was determined with a stick, lol.

 

Hummm, perhaps I have been too hasty about the MPG effect of the Toyota patch. I'll use my handy Pentium based computer to check:

• 1000.8 miles / 10.9 gallons = 40 MPG!

Holly Carp! The Pentium has proved the patch skeptics are right.

Bob Wilson

 

Well, if I thought to call up the CAR data on the sound system, I could have checked if the numbers were the same. I didn't bother.