Impressions after a month

We've now owned our Prius for a month, barely long enough to really know the car, but long enough to have an idea how it will work out for us. I continue to be one very happy camper - the heated seats of the model IV are sure nice on cold mornings, and the heater is very efficient. Saturday we'll head to a dealership for the 5,000 mile service - I guess it's a tire rotation and various checks but no oil change until 10,000?

I drove our second car for the first time since buying the Prius and had to get used to it all over again. The Prius is so smooth, something I've come to appreciate. The Prius is so much smoother and quieter than the Honda Fit that I find myself much more relaxed when I get home every evening - even being stuck in traffic doesn't seem all that bad now.

I'm still a little surprised that our computed mpg for the month (total miles driven divided by total gallons for the month) is over 51! I'm not a hypermiler - we're driving the same route to and from work as we've always driven (there aren't all that many options), mostly either high-speed or slow and go freeways, with a couple miles of stop and creep city streets. We have an almost 6,000 foot elevation difference between the house and work, so I wasn't expecting to get anywhere near 50 mpg.

I hope all of the other new owners around here are having as good a time with their cars as I am with mine!

 

We still need to buy chains for it. It was a big relief to not be handed a sheet saying "do not use chains on this car" when we bought it - that happened to me when we bought the Fit. It meant that we didn't drive it for periods of time during the winter, when the roads were bad or when I didn't feel interested in digging it out. I'm not so sure I'll use chains very often, but at least it gives us the ability to get home if they put restrictions on the local roads. We tended to drive the Wrangler if there was any hint that the weather/road conditions would be lousy. I'll still be more likely to take the Jeep, since chains are such a pain. Every year I consider getting snow tires, but it does seem like a waste when we'd only have snowy/icy roads for the first 10-15 miles or so of our 75 mile (one way) commute.

The Prius handles so well on the open highway - we've driven from (more or less) L.A. to Vegas twice. I was surprised to see that we used more gas going to Vegas than coming back - my experience with other vehicles has been the opposite. But perhaps it's the influence of the hills you have to go over (except for one they are steeper going west to east). My other cars were probably more influenced by wind than the grades, perhaps.

The car seems to handle the wind pretty well, it doesn't seem to be blown around as much as the Fit (and the Wrangler, but that's not saying much - its like driving a vehicle with the aerodynamics of a sail), and it doesn't affect the mileage as much as I had expected (it does drop it somewhat).

I'd be fascinated to know what your wife gets going from Maine to DC - that's quite a trip!

 

As many have mentioned here, the car indicates higher mpg than what I compute each time I fill up. It's not completely consistent, sometimes is over 5%, sometimes less. But when I average the differences for the month it came out to 4.99% - that's consistent with what others have indicated.

The first tank that was significantly under 5% was a fill-up in Las Vegas, I wondered if Nevada gas formula would have made a difference that way. However, the second Nevada tank was about the same as all of the California tanks, so I don't think that had anything to do with it.

I did check the odometer against a hand-held GPS, to see how accurate it was. The Wrangler's odometer is short, which means that the mpg I compute is "optimistic", I haven't actually traveled quite as far as the car's odometer says. I tracked the Prius's odometer for about 6 miles and it seemed to match. I know that's a bit short to really judge, but the Wrangler's odo difference was apparent after a mile and significant after 5, so I think the mpg I'm computing is probably pretty close to being accurate.