How to accelerate?

No, since you drive upside down, mashing the pedal to the floor is actually the preferred method.

Tom

 

Wow, I'm really getting Pummeled here. I understand your experience and excellent results and I'm not taking anything away from that, although, many people out there who are getting 38-50mpg in their priui would love to get 57-60. The method I have used may not be the best or most efficient but it is easy and does not require any additional instrumentation. I have and still own other hybrids and honestly, habits die hard. In my Altima Hybrid as posted at greenhybrid, I have demonstrated best in class efficiency, that should count for something. Anyway, as stated, I will try different methods as soon as this tank expires.

 

No intention to pummel. In these forums we often discuss and debate various subtle aspects of Prius operation and technique. Often there is insufficient information, or only subjective results, which makes it impossible to reach a hard conclusion. Occasionally a topic comes up that can be addressed with hard science. Electric operation is one of the topics that can easily be proven to be inefficient for ordinary operation. It doesn't even require physical testing. A simple black box engineering analysis will show that it takes more energy to go through the conversion-charging-discharging-conversion path.

Once again, I'm not picking on you personally. In the interest of playing nicely, people often acknowledge that other interpretations may exist, or that one person's experience may differ from another. Often this is true, but not always. This is one of the few absolute cases where there is no wiggle room. As an engineer, I like absolute cases. Unfortunately there aren't many of them.

Tom

 

Please excuse a dumb question. I bought my '07 Prius less than a week ago and I'm confused about the lingo here. What's 'gliding' and how do I do it efficiently?

BTW I posted elsewhere that I got 18mpg on my first errand because I left the parking brake on. I believe its possible to get much better mileage now that the brake is off.

 

That brake sounds defective: I really can't move my car with it on.

I'm a fan of getting up to speed in a hurry than kicking in the cruise. All that stuff about the cruise not being as efficient overlooks the boring work of having to closely monitor the car to squeeze out every last MPG.

It's been my experience that getting 50MPG is not always going to be possible depending on where you live. Just kicking around Western NY (like Lockport), I got 50+ doing the same stuff I do here, but HERE I get maybe 43MPG. Flatter roads lead to better MPGs.

As far as 70+MPG, well, like I said, sounds like WORK...

 

LOL - yes, the parking brake will hurt your mileage.

Glide is when you coast with no regenerative braking and no thrust from the engine or motors (or only small amounts of either). The Prius simulates normal engine drag by applying a small amount of regeneration when you take your foot off of the gas. Adding just a small amount of gas will cancel this and produce a glide. It can be seen as a zero arrow condition on the consumption screen.

Tom

 

Yeah, in that light we should be talking about Gallons per month/year and nothing else.

If you keep track of miles per period, MPGs can always be calculated as well. But having the numbers for both the miles and the gallons is much more useful because then people who drive a similar number of miles can compare directly with each other.

 

How to accelerate?

By pushing the car up to 10 mph

 

I wish I had a little handout on how to get the best MPG with a Prius...

...there is a silver pine mica that lives in the same town I do, that consistently crawls along at about 5 mph. I'm sure she is TRYING to get good mileage, but all she is doing is p***ing off everyone behind her.

 

I just bought a new 2009 prius, on my first tank i averaged 54.24 MPG which i feel is excelent, but im also still unsure on how to accelerate, specially when i start with an uphill gradient. I seem to average about 30~MPG when going uphill which i feel i could increase

 

Naw it's totally normal to use much more fuel going uphill. Just remember that even on a modest grade hill you'd be gliding at practically zero fuel usage going the other way. Now if you average the uphill and the downhill fuel consumption at 30 mpg going up and zero fuel usage going down you get a very repectable 60 mpg.

Actually I'm often averaging only 20mpg or so going up hills. Of course it depends on the gradient of the hill though.

 

Edit: Whoops, sorry for bringing up old thread...posted to ask a question, turned out I missed the entire second page of discussion, and now can't find the delete button (yikes!).