New car , first Toyota, first hybrid - help!

Your average is affected by the limited distance you have driven. In time you should see it approach what most people in your area can expect. there is also good advice above, re just letting it do it's own thing. ECO mode will help train you to get used to not having lead foot acceleration.

 

No!

 

Ignore this. It means sitting and letting the engine ( otherwise referred to as the ICE, Internal Combustion Engine) warm up and charge the battery. It gains you nothing in the long run.

 

Pretty much everything goes off except the computer that organizes the door locks/lights.

 

No.

 

The last bar on the fuel gauge starts blinking, roughly 1/2 gallon after the second bar goes dark, or when 'Distance to Empty' drops to roughly 25 miles. But it doesn't change color, so it easily missed.

There is also a single 'beep' the moment this bar starts flashing, but this can get lost in loud music or road noise. This beep repeats every time the car is restarted without a refueling.

This warning leaves a significant safety margin before the car actually runs out of gas. For an estimate of how much fuel and range really remains, read the first post of this long thread:
[WARNING] Running out of gas (Gen III)

 

That's why your MPG is low. (True city drivers never achieve the EPA's advertised city MPG.)

By the way you need to drive a car at least 15 minutes to get the oil hot enough to vaporize the water it absorbs. Right now in summer it isn't really a problem to heat-up quickly but in the winter it will be. Water in the oil reduces lubrication and, when the car is sitting, causes internal corrosion. I'd recommend driving the Prius (or any car) once a week on the highway. Like Sunday morning.

 

With such low usage you might have a problem with the 12 volt battery.

 

Prius Plug-in will do best for him if goal is saving from gas.

 

Read my thread, I had similar experience with my Prius (brand new as well)
Battery drains while parked under the hot sun | PriusChat

 

People seem to forget that the so-called advertised MPG is not a promise, of any sort. The measurement was originally created to provide a standardized basis of comparison. It's actually just a number for rating, not an expectation. Reading the information provided on the window-sticker, you'll see there's a range stated, that the big number is really just an average.

So, things like short trips are not necessarily accounted for. Efficiency will be much lower if driving just within the warm-up time. It will be lower in extreme temperatures and at very high-speeds too. There are also circumstances when efficiency is much higher, like suburb driving with few stops.

To complicate matters, many new Prius owners have no idea what their previous vehicle actually delivered. There was no MPG display available, so the ups & downs were never known.

Things like that contributed heavily to the slow growth of hybrids. Then EPA made adjustments to their measurement process, taking better into account the circumstances not originally considered when the standards were first established. Now, we're finding out the values themselves aren't being properly reported. Ugh.

 

False.

The raw CAFE city test cycle is 11 miles long. Shorter distances on cold engines will produce lower numbers that the raw CAFE city figure, just a hair over 70 mpg.

But the EPA city figure is substantially discounted from that, and averaged in with other tests, including a cold test. That leaves quite a bit of room to beat EPA.

When I was commuting, the 18 mile route each way was long enough to outweigh the cold start, easily beating EPA and sometimes beating even CAFE even when taking a 100% city route.

 

City cycle is about 23 mins long, 17 stops. At one section, it goes above 55 mph.

 

I apologize. Replace "never" with rarely.
I certainly didn't get the EPA city score in my Prius in downtown drive of L.A. My score was 10 below the EPA score (which is based upon LA so should have been accurate). I doubt other people get good MPGs in the typical "redlight on every block" drive of a city.

 

That's clearly more extreme than the EPA city cycle. You won't get EPA figure.

Before we moved, I had 2 miles commute with 13 redlights and a stop sign. In that year, my gas efficiency was 56 MPG.

That's because EV miles allowed me to avoid using gas. PiP is cleverly set up.

 

That is why I suggested reading just the first post.

While some important stuff was discovered half way through the thread, Post #1 alone has most of what you need to know.

 

I would replace 'rarely' with 'frequently', but quite dependent on the conditions.

Even in L.A., 'city' will have a very wide range of meanings to different people in different situations, and conditions on many routes likely have changed substantially over the past four decades.

The Federal Test Profile clearly doesn't run into a red light on most blocks, but only 23 red lights in 11 miles. In my area, that is equivalent to about 175 blocks total distance, or red lights at average spacings of 7 to 8 blocks. Places where drivers hit red every block or two, or take two or more cycles to get through each light, are considerably more harsh.