Am I a good candidate to own a Prius

Seems like a good route in need of driver retraining for best results. 55mph is the magic number for efficiency. Any higher (75mph) and you are burning most of your gas to beat the headwind instead of travel down the road.

Yes it does prefer city driving, or anywhere there is stop and go (most highways during rush hour). And by prefer I mean 55mpg being easy to achieve, versus highway 50mpg being harder to achieve. Ken@Japan has gone 1400miles (I think?) on 1 single tank of gas (non-US non-bladder tank). On the highway if you drive it with no user changes then you have a really efficient and aerodynamic vehicle that will net you high mpgs. If you drive it in the city you have a really efficient and aerodynamic vehicle that turns its engine off when you don't need it.

This isn't a golf cart, it can go fast. It's pickup is better than most cars out there because of the instant torque of the electric motors. Despite what TV says, these things can go the speed limit and beyond. On a now-not-so-recent trip through Nevada I was in a pack of cars going 105mph to 110mph and it was no sweat. The stock Toyota limiter is close to that range too. Even at those speeds, 38mpg was achieved on the next fillup. No other 5 door giant can do that.

Now, when the battery is low (don't worry it automatically recharges, you don't even have to think about it) there is not as much umph available since it must spin the engine harder without electricity helping. But it is still fine for passing at high speed.

You would need a custom paint job for that. Or wrap it in vinyl.

These are low maintenance, low repair occurrence, high repair cost vehicles.

What I mean by that is:

Oil changes every 10K to 15K
Brakes maybe done at 150K, maybe 200K, maybe never
No transmission, nothing to break there
No alternator, nothing to break there
No starter, nothing to break there

and the list goes on.

Really all you need to do is change your oil every now and then and fill it up with cheap petrol.

The battery is warranted for 10 years depending on your state (CARB or not) and that doesn't mean it will die in 10 years, that means Toyota no longer will pay for it if it does die. GenI (pre 2004) Prii had a weak battery system, and failures are still rare. The GenII has had extremely few failures, most under warranty.

Now when things go wrong (and by wrong I dont mean false codes because of a bad 12v battery) you are looking at a large repair bill. But most people never have issues, it is built like a Toyota and not built to fail. I would wager the percentile of those that have had work done because of failure and not because of accident is in the single digit percents.

 

I am working on a 'owners who should not drive a prius' post

http://priuschat.com/forums/newbie-forum/94450-considering-prius.html#post1334003

for 98% of folks, it is a nice car, check to see if you are in the 2%

 

Good write-up, 2k1

Big Lefty, you sound like you'd get around mid-40 mpgs with what you wrote. With some small driving habits changed you probably could get it toward or at 50, since the Gen III (the newer Prii that are out) are noticeable better in terms of mileage on the highway than the older generations. That may help for you doing the math to see if you feel it's worth it in the long run.

 

Thought I'd like to chime in as a new Prius driver myself...I received my 2011 Prius III about two weeks ago now.

As 2k1Toaster stated, the Prius efficiency is better at lower speeds versus interstate (freeway) speeds. That being said, I took my Prius on a ~600 mile roadtrip the second week I had it from Cincinnati to Detroit and averaged 55.3MPG just using cruise control.

While driving a mix of about 20% 45-55mph roads and 80% 70mph interstate regularly to work I'm averaging around 48.5MPG currently. I may be a little heavy-footed in my non-interstate driving though...I'm still feeling out how to best drive the Prius.

 

Many folks here get their best mileage in the summer, but you may find that A/C means spring and fall is your best MPG in AZ

Since the batteries are cooled by cabin air, it is a false economy not to use any A/C

 

you won't use much battery on the freeway. the car takes care of itself. i agree with mike, probably mid forties. would it be worth it for that small increase from the mc?

 

Prius max MPGs are not the same as all-gas max MPGs. Slow and fast acceleration hurt mpg. There is a happy magic point. Gliding as in getting the engine to shut off while just coasting is another art that will yield good mpgs. But gliding with the engine off and battery acceleration applied will net lower mpgs. Lots of things like that.

The batteries will recharge automatically no matter what you do. Don't even worry about it. If they get low (40%) more engine power is used and they auto recharge. If they get too full (80%), the engine spins like an air pump and burns some off.

 

As the others have stated, the car work great on the freeway. Nothing else beats it. It is only because it does better in the city than the highway that people claim it is not good on the highway.

I drive 98% freeway at 70mph in my GenII and I could still achieve 50mpg with the right tires. A GenIII doesn't suffer the ame MPG loss at higher speeds like the GenII does. Tests have been done to show that the GenIII can go approx. 10mph faster than the GenII and achieve the same MPG. I.E. a GenII may get 55mpg at 60mph whereas a GenIII can get 55mpg at 70mph. The numbers are a bit off I believe but you get the point. The extra torque from the larger 1.8L engine really helps the GenIII beat the GenII in high speed mpg.

 

Paranoid. Not really, just a bit of fear of the unknown.

Many Gen2 drivers ran into this on long steep climbs in Colorado, but many others seem to have figured out how to not suffer this problem. It doesn't happen on level roads or mild climbs at legal speeds.

Gen3 is more powerful, and draining the battery on highway mountain climbs is nearly unheard of. I never encountered it in the mountains of MT, WY, and CO, let alone crossing AZ on I-40, during a road trip vacation.

My battery drains only in sustained stop-and-crawl traffic congestion, or low speed inclines, where speed and power demands are too low to force the ICE on until a low battery triggers it. This not really a problem, but when it is annoying, a pulse-and-glide scheme prevents it.

 

Bigleftyinaz,

Your combined mpg will be hard to beat.

A few vehicles could beat the highway fuel economy of the Prius, but essentially none of them are mainstream in the US.

 

If you can get down the ramp on regen braking without filling the HV battery (8 bars plus just a little more), then B mode is just a waste of energy.

Regen braking can reach the full battery recharge rate. B mode cannot increase it. If driving for efficiency, use B only when descents will force friction brake heating.

Some folks use B for a sporty feel, or to slow down faster or recharge at bit faster without lighting up the brake lights. Just be aware these uses throw away some of the energy that otherwise could have been put into the battery with D mode and ordinary regen.

 

My dealer told me B mode recharges the battery to 100% in two minutes(!). No, B mode is only engine braking, it decreases regen, not increases it. Dealers say a lot of silly things to sell those cars...

You sound like you already hypermile if you get that good mileage in your car. Yeah, pulse and glide can work in a non-hyrid, though not to such an extreme degree, since during my glide the engine is off, no gas is being used, extra, but with a neutral glide (as opposed to in drive which, yes, cuts gas use but slows the car considerably) there is still some gas used so it doesn't have the exponential effect of the engine-off glide.

I would look at cleanmpg.com if you're interested in getting some more from a gas engine, they are the real experts. I cheat by using a hybrid

Beating the EPA - The Why’s and How to Hypermile - CleanMPG Forums

 

Did you get a chance to test that B mode thing yet, Mike? I tried it again today on a short but steep downhill section of road and my SOC started climbing higher faster than when I was just using the brakes.

 

Not yet, should this weekend though, just don't have to be out on the road before then. Heck, don't even need to be then, just for the 12v, really!

 

Well don't go screwing up your MPG goal just for this. I just want to know why I think I am experiencing a faster recharge when everyone says I shouldn't be. Then again like Billy Joel sang, "I may be crazy"....