Good story!

Thanks, Godiva

It seems to me that in one of my earlier days on PC it seemed like most Prius drivers were driving more miles because they were getting better mileage. Many of you said you were driving twice as much or something close to that. If this is still the case how much gasoline is really being saved. If you are averaging 45 mpg in your Prius but driving twice as much, your former vehicle would have to averaged less than 22.5 mpg to be saving ANY fuel at all.

This is not quite valid. The fact is I think people do drive more when they get a new car! I know I do because my old one fell apart so much I was afraid to go on trips.

So even with driving more we are still saving like Toyota says, vs what we would burn with a different new car we could have bought.

anyone near the 405 that can snap a pic of this bill??? would be great...

My wife and I put a lot of miles on our Prius, BECAUSE it gets good mileage.
But those are miles NOT put on our other car.
Before the Prius, we each had our own car and the miles were split evenly.
Now, we rotate cars, depending on who is going to drive farther. Some days, I stop by her work and trade cars if I have to go somewhere farther.

Instead of about 8K miles on 2 cars, we now put about 14k on the prius and 2K on the Jeep. That's a huge savings in gas and pollution. And we still have the 4 wheel drive for those fun MN snow days.

So to the point of the topic, we do put more miles on the Prius than on previous car, but those are miles we would have put on another vehicle, not extra miles we would not have driven.

I hope they put up one of these billboards where I live. It's nice to see the cumulative effects of going hybrid. I think they should add these snippets from the article to the billboard:

* Avoiding nearly 900,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere.

* Allowing the savings of 4 million barrels of crude oil

* Avoiding more than 3 million pounds of smog-forming gases

I find it hard to believe that people drive twice as much in a Prius as they do in their previous cars. I drive the same amount, which is pretty much just to commute to and from work. What's changed is I have to refuel only half as frequently despite the gas tank of the new car being the same size as my previous one.

I've heard this before, that people drive more if their cars get better mileage which negates the mileage advantage, etc, etc. Not sure how true this is. I drive about the same as I did before I got my Prius, and the Prius gets almost exactly twice the mileage of my former car, so I am indeed saving gas and money. Gasoline would have to hit about 5 bucks a gallon before my Prius costs would equal my Ford Escort Wagon cost per mile for fuel.

I don't think most people have time to do any more driving than they already do....

Remember to take Malorn's comments with a shaker of salt. His early days were a month ago, and people were NOT driving more miles. Some were doing cross-country expeditions, but that's not out of the ordinary.

The notion that there isn't much or any gas saved by cars like the Prius is ridiculous. I've seen it in a number of locatons. People have lives to live, not infinite amounts of time to drive around burning up gas just because they can. Seriously, how many people do you think have driven significanltly more just because they bought a Prius. Its a preposterous notion.

On the other hand, yes, when people buy a new car, no matter what type, they tend to drive it more until the newnesss wears off. Also, there will be a few people who will drive more because it now costs them less to do so. But this is a very small number of people, and the impact is minor.

I know that I now drive exactly as much as I always did. However, the Prius has saved even more fuel that the "normal" comparison would indicate. I used to have two cars, one that got about 28 mpg and one that got 21 mpg. The Prius replaced the 28 mpg car which was the commuter, and the 21 mpg car was generally used for longer trips. Now, the Prius is the commuter and the Prius is the car used for longer trips. The 21 mpg car is rarely used. So in my case simply comparing the mileage of the Prius to the car it replaced UNDERESTIMATES the amount of fuel the Prius has saved.

It amazes me how such utter nonsense keeps getting repeated over and over.

I'll see if I can get a shot of that billboard.. I go by it like once a week.

And for the record.. I drive about the same as I did before I got my Prius. I might offer to drive rather than have my friends drive.. but since their cars get worse gas milage I think we are all coming out ahead.

go Prius!

-peter

"Many" or just a few? I'm driving about the same as before, about 26,000km a year. Mostly business-related.

Compared to my previous vehicle, I'm getting - on average - close to 5 times the fuel economy and putting out a fraction of the emissions. With a fraction of the maintenance too.

This car would be a good fleet vehicle, especially for traffic enforcement (Parking enforcement).

How about a webcam?

I'm heading up to El Segundo tomorrow afternoon for a movie at the Old Town Music Hall...I'll see if I can manage to snap a picture on the way up or back (don't know which side of the fwy it's on-north or south).

thanks rankid

we may not be saving gas by taking the prius home to visit family 1500 miles away... but we are saving a WHOLE LOT of jet fuel and a lot of money for plane tickets. and we're making our lives better by being able to see those close to us more than once a year.

worth it to me...

i drove in my Prius more because of my far flung family, before i drove alone (had a pickup, couldnt carry much) or rode with someone else.

now at nearly every function, i take 3-4 others with me and saves 1-2 vehicles from making a 110 or 200 mile round trip.

so ya, i drive more... but to say that the gas usage would be the same is very very very wrong.

I saw a briefly a Billboard, car dealership combo that was there for a few short days as far as I know. I went back 3 days later to take a picture and it was gone. Please trust me, my wife saw it! On I-5 in Fife Wash. over a big Cadillac, Hummer dealer. It was a Toyota HSD billboard with something like " Is your tank half full" Toyota HSD. Blue and white. I would guess that someone at Viacom has a sense of humor. The Caddy dealer apparently does not.

I'm a bad photographer...I took several pictures of the billboard in question, but unfortunately this is the only one that even semi-turned out:



It's tough to get a good picture of something roadside on the 405 fwy when you're the driver and also trying to avoid merging traffic.

For anyone else who might want to attempt a better photo (and hopefully has a passenger who can take that photo while you're driving), the billboard is on the 405 southbound, just past the Rosecrans onramp. It's just before a sharp curve in the road to the left and the billboard's on the right (just above the Pacific VW dealership).