Environment and settling on mileage goals

Filled up today and got 50.2 actual with 53.8 on the CONS display. With my hilly commute, albeit it a bit of a lower elevation headed home, I'm settling in to be content with 50+mpg no matter which route I take. Funny thing is I realized this when I went to a colleagues house to help her with a plumbing issue last weekend. She lives parallel to all the hills I must take to work and all the high mileage tricks I've learned here netted in the high 60's to and from her house. If my office was situated in her area of town I could easily top 60mpg per tank. The whole trip was a classic P&G. I finally feel as though I'm doing the best I can with the environment in which I have to work.

Anybody else have a similar, cathartic "Prius moment"?

 

"Much better that anything else I've driven" is the key to it all. Although I could sometimes get over 40mpg on the highway with my '08 Corolla, I barely got 28mpg on my work commute only tanks. Also, what bisco said about the pips holds true. Having it right there in front of you helps to regulate your driving habits. I have learned that "flooring it" going uphill doesn't reasonably get me up to speed any faster than not "flooring it". The instantaneous pips have been a real eye opener there. My wife's CR-V has an instantaneous pip also and I have increased highway mileage on it on long trips by about 4mpg by keeping a watchful eye. I got almost 30mpg on a recent trip to Jax Fl when she usually gets about 26mpg.

 

I will definetly take a look at Google Maps. I will also try specific routes for a week at a time starting Monday. I have tried to be as scientific as possible, gauging alternate routes using the most used in the past, as sort of my control but haven't stuck with one for more than a day or so at a time. Thanks Bob.

 

A pip is the little bars like on your battery indicator or the fuel guage. The HSI, hybrid system indicator is the thing to watch. It has moving arrows indicating energy flow from or to the battery or wheels when green and when red indicates the ICE, internal combustion engine, is running. It will have an area at the bottom center that says CONS. It shows your mpg's since the trip meter was last reset. I've only had mine since March so maybe the Gurus will chime in to elaborate more and, hopefully, correct me for any inaccuracies in my explanation.

Hint from another quasi-newbie. Use the instantaneous 0-100mpg indicator. It will help to hone your driving habits for the most efficiency as you learn. It's immediate feedback.

 

Click through the menus with the DISP button on the right side of the steering wheel. It will look like this. It will say "hybrid system indicator" on top (kind of a fuzzy picture I snapped). The CONS display is at the center bottom and displays the mpg's since the trip was reset (A or B depending on how many times you click the DISP button). The CONS number has always been about 5% over my actual calculated mileage.

 

When you get to the HSI you can then click TRIP (just under the DISP button on steering wheel) and cycle through a few screens that change the line below HSI. One shows trip A, the next is trip B and the next is ODO (odometer). When you get to trip A or B, hold down the TRIP button for a second or 2 and it resets them to zero.

I'm still learning this thing myself. After a fillup mine used to automatically go to SETTINGS to set the price I paid per gal. It didn't do that on my last fillup and I can't seem to figure out how to cycle through SETTINGS to change it.

 

In the states "mileage" means miles per gallon.