hello from cyprus

From one noob to another, Welcome Maria!

May all of your miles be better than the previous.

 

Welcome Maria......enjoy your Prius!! My "Eleanor" is 5 weeks old. I just love her. She is well-engineered car besides being just a hybrid. Keep us informed........

 

G'day Maria, enjoy your PriusChat and your Prius.
You will soon realise using EV isn't the lowest fuel consumption way to drive a Prius.

 

Welcome.

There are many threads on PC dealing with best techniques for fuel mileage. I won't try to cover them all again here, but in a nutshell for best mileage you try to NOT use the battery. It may seem counter intuitive, but here is why:

All of the energy in a Prius comes from burning gas, even the energy stored in the battery. To get that energy into the battery, you first burn gas in the engine, creating mechanical energy, then convert the mechanical energy into electricity, and then convert the electricity into chemical energy inside of the battery. When you use energy from the battery you convert the chemical energy into electrical energy, and then convert the electrical energy back into mechanical energy. Every one of those conversion steps wastes energy, and there are a lot of steps. When you power the car from the gas engine you go directly from gasoline to moving the car - it's lot fewer steps.

So the long and the short is to avoid driving from the battery. There are a few situations where EV mode makes sense, mostly creeping in slow traffic or moving short distances, such as across a parking lot. Other than that, try not to use the battery.

Tom

 

Welcome Maria!
I've had my 2008 Prius for a week now and I'm super happy myself.. too bad in the US you have to buy a mod to use the car on EV mode only, it's not standard like in other Countries
But I'm still VERY happy about my purchase.. After almost 200 miles the tank is still 1/2 full! :cheer2:

 

Also, in another thread it was suggested that EV mode may be better for going up snowy, icy, gravelly or otherwise slippery inclines that in other driving modes might cause the Traction Control to cut off power to the drive wheels.