First Prius

:welcome: all the best, hope the snow melts soon!

 

If you bought from a dealer just ask them nicely to change the headlight timer for free. Not sure if the 2011 is the same as my 2010, if it is you can also have them change the reverse beep to one single beep.
Also, my headlights will turn off immediately if I hit the lock button twice on by fob while walking away.

 

I don't see how those would be issues to any great extent. I use the AC in town, for that part of my commute, and have the headlights on all the time. With mixed driving I usually get at least 50-52mpg. When I drive around town on the weekends, that can drop to about 47-48mpg. Still, very impressive when you complain to your neighbor that you are "only" getting 47mpg at the moment - the look on their face is precious. =\

Welcome aboard. I think you will be pleasantly surprised overall.

 

I do the same thing when locking my car. I found that feature by accident. So, I don't have to worry about the timer. It is very convenient. As far as the mpg goes, I usually get 55+, but you learn pretty quickly which display motivates you the most to drive like a hybrid driver should. Even though I have had my car around a month, I find myself getting disappointed when my mileage doesn't grow like I want it to. But, I know which parts of my commute are best for my mileage and which ones aren't. Either way, I am starting to appreciate traffic.

 

AC use can have a very large negative impact on mpg in sme situations. This is especially true in the summer during in city and highway operation. If the engine is only running to allow the AC or heater to function then you will obviously observe a mpg loss.

I did a lot of AC testing during the summer last year and depending on ambient outside temps and your desired setting you could observe a 10mpg drop for as long as 30miles of freeway driving.

Click on the video below for an example of AC use ans mpg loss.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...243iAg&usg=AFQjCNG4cBLgSMXH6UV31I37_un5yIApiw

 

Not to thread jack, but what is the standard timer on a 2011 to turn the headlights off? I generally like to drive with them on, but I'm coming off a base model 04 Cavalier and leaving them on in that car = battery death so I was concerned with the Prius. (If its somewhere in the owners manual I haven't had time to make it all the way through, this thing has about 200000 more features than my old car, lol).

 

Congrats on your purchase! Please don't go nuts with the hypermiling and drafting, though. I know I did when I first got the car, and look back on it now thinking, "I was kind of a jerk."

 

We just bought ours on Saturday the 14th. In the fall I sold A 3 banger Geo Metro that I had hypermiled successfully. Mechanically it was bone stock, but I removed 140 lbs, inflated the tires to their max, and added homemade headlight covers and a grill block to get a best (4 times) at 55-60 mph 60 mpg. Two days after we bought the Prius I drove it back to the dealership to rdrop off my trade in title and on smooth road at 55 mph on cruise it got a BETTER THAN GEO 62.1!!!!!!!!!!!

When I draft I stay about a full semi trucks length behind, but did not draft that day.

So...how do you hypermile a Prius?
:welcome::welcome::welcome::welcome::welcome::welcome::welcome::welcome:

 

Sounds from your Metro results like you know what you're doing!!

Prius has been tough for me because it doesn't offer the driver a lot of choices.

On the highway: I just roll in the right lane at the lowest speed I feel comfortable at, but not over the PSL. If nobody is behind me, I may let the speed sag a bit on the uphills and regain it on the downhill (or before that if someone is coming up behind me). Occasionally on the right kind of downhill I can get it into warp stealth: ICE spinning (usually at 992rpm) but 0 gph fuel flow. Adding more than a touch of throttle initiates fuel flow. Sometimes I just give up and turn on the cruise control, and it often does close to what I can do with my foot. The problem with cruise is that it maintains a set speed, and (traffic permitting) you may be able to do better by letting the speed vary a bit in response to the terrain.

Around town: I stick to the PSL and try to run electric. Briefly backing off the throttle at speeds under 45 mph may shut down the ICE (rpm=0) and you can keep it off as long as the load doesn't go above half way (I use the HSD screen with the horizontal load bar). Obviously the battery will run down over time so I try to recharge it by kicking on the ICE where I would need extra oomph anyway, so kill two birds with one stone.

Plus all the usual momentum-management stuff: timing stoplights, easing into stops rather than charging into them, moderate accels (especially if there is nobody behind me), hitting turns at the right speed so I don't need to brake, etc.

It's a very comfy car so I just relax and enjoy that. And every so often, usually in summer, the mpg gods smile on me and I get outrageously good mpg, which almost makes up for the lousy-but-still-better-than-most-cars mpg it gives in the rain.

I long since stopped caring what other drivers think of me or of hybrids. Around here at least a third of them are engrossed in their cell phone conversations so they probably aren't aware of anything else anyway. I don't look at other drivers, even the occasional honker, to avoid escalating any road rage - just focus on the road ahead and behind, checking who's yakking or speeding among the cars behind me and keeping a more careful eye on those.

A ScanGauge helps with all of this. For the four parameters I use: RPM (shows whether the ICE is spinning), GPH (fuel flow - for some reason it displays 0.02GPH when RPM=0), MPG (easier to read than the vertical bar display on the HSD), and coolant temp (shows if the ICE is warmed up).

Other people here have more complex methods that I haven't been able to master.

 

Okay, so basically how I drive all of cars! Good to know that there isn't some trick that I don't know about.

When I post the 33 mpg that I get with my modified 335 hp SRT4 Neon on the SRT Nat'l forum a bunch of members chime in with I am full of it, to which I ask, how many of them have checked their mpg after driving ONLY 55-60 on longer trips and have airred up their tire pressure. NONE is the answer. I know one member that took my method one step further and put on 15" rims with 195/65 tires to replace his heavier stock 17" rims that have 205/50s on them...a nearly 30 lb savings! He had the same mods and turbo that I used to have and scored one extra mpg. My car would run 12.8s on the smaller turbo, but now runs 12.1s...a crap load of FUN! When I had a modified stock turbo I got 36 since it had a crap load of torque right at those speeds so I hardly touched the gas to maintain that speed. What's worse are the members that have modded their cars to use E-85 so they can run more boost safely.

 

Well maybe there is, but I sure haven't found it yet.

Exactly. Any car will yield surprisingly better mpg if driven a bit more easily and if the tires are pumped up to sidewall rating. Most people don't realize that because they've never tried it, or they don't have a way to monitor average mpg short of running a full tank through. They just figure the car gets EPA no matter what they do, even outrageously hard driving.

I once filled the Outback I used to own, hopped onto the highway, and ran a full tank through, refilling in northern Maine. Tires at sidewall rating, speed 50-60mph, warm summer day, 26 foot rowing shell in a rack on the roof (going to a race). Instead of the 25mpg I typically got from 80mph commuting, this trip yielded 34mpg. Astonishing. Made a convert of me.

 

Insight-I Owner gets great mpg. He is the only case I recall of good results among those who "try to run electric." See the links in my sig. Gliding seems very easy to me. Running on electric means you have burned gas to put it there, with wasteful conversion of energy. I try to avoid running electric. A cross town round trip nets me 70+mpg, even starting with a cold engine.

Others who run on electric struggle to get in the 40's. Obviously, Insight-I Owner is doing things right, but this one point confounds me to explain how it works so well for him. Whatever works this well, I applaud, though.

 

I agree with you 100% that running electric SHOULD be more wasteful. In fact, avoiding electric usage is exactly how I was taught to drive the Insight-I: using MIMA to shut off assist and topping off the battery with regen in lean burn (or better yet fuel cut) on downhills.

Best guess is that the gently undulating terrain in this area skews the balance: lots of short slight ups and downs. I need the ICE on the ups, and running electric on the downs and levels saves the gas needed just to keep the ICE running (in the Insight-I I'd FAS and coast). Maybe using light loading while it's in electric mode stretches the battery out long enough to make this gas saving more than offset the serious inefficiency of discharging/recharging? I also wonder if recharging this way costs less gas because it comes at a point when the ICE is already under load (going uphill) rather than under a low-load condition where the ICE is burning gas less efficiently?? I don't use the EV button, I just modulate the throttle to get it into electric mode and keep it there.

This probably won't work in more typical terrain, so it was probably fuelish to mention it, sorry.