January MPG Averages

It's been 5-25 degrees here also and I am averaging 48mpg as opposed to hig 50s in the summer. This is without trying though, I've been running late for work in the past few days, so I have no time to work on my milage. I drive about 50 miles one way and my speed is around 70-75mph. Heat set to 71 degrees, low fan speed.

 

I'm impressed and depressed all at the same time. I drive 40 miles each way to work, virtualy all highway (wish it was "virtual"). Since the cold weather hit, I'm averaging about 42 mpg. I have to drive at least 70 mph or people run over me...

 

I've found the best way to stay relaxed is to cruise around 67 mph in the right lane. I do leave earlier for work in the morning so that helps, too.

What I observe is that 67 or so is fast enough not to cause trouble but slow enough to force others to pass you (tailgaters get hot feet). Also, merging traffic is easy enough because I can slow down my cruise to let others in and when that happens faster drivers almost always pass. This allows me to stay in the right lane.

It amazes me how stressed out and rabid people are on the road. It does seem like some folks are angry enough to run you down. Maybe we could run a white flag on our roof antennas to submit. Some days I'd like to swap that with a skull and crossbones....

 

I AM VERY UNHAPPY WITH MY 2004 PRIUS MILEAGE!!
I HAVE HAD THE CAR IN A FEW TIMES ABOUT THIS ISSUE.
I HAVE BEEN GETTING ONLY 38-40 MPG DURING THE PAST SUMMER... BUT HAVE MOMENTS OF 45+... BUT AVERAGES HAVE BEEN IN THE UPPER 30'S.
NOW WITH WINTER SETTING IN I HAVE ON MY LAST TANK AVERAGE BEEN ABOUT 34.2
TEMPS HERE IN CONNECTICUT HAVE BEEN 30-40 DEGREES.
ANYONE ELSE HAVE THESE PROBLEMS.
WHEN I FIRST GOT MY CAR IN 9/2004, HAD BEEN GETTING 45 MPG, THEN HAD A SOFTWARE CHANGE DUE TO STALL OF ENGINE, MPG DROPPED TO 38-40 MPG
JUST HAD THE RECALL SOFTWARE UPGRADE AND FOUND THAT THE MPG'S WENT UP A BIT, BUT NOW ARE WORSE THAN EVER.
IT SEEMS THAT MY BATTERY GAGE IS ALMOST ALWAYS IN OR CLOSE TO GREEN.
ANY SUGGESTS?????

 

Do you have a short commute? Do you have to make short trips throughout the day? Those are things that will hammer your gas mileage. Does Connecticut use ethanol in their fuel during the winter? That will lower you MPG a little. Also, check the pressure in your tyres. That can have a significant impact on your mileage. Other than that, your driving style has a huge impact on the efficiency of the car. There are a lot of thread here that go into the best techniques for good mileage.

 

Prius is two months old. My average over 1500 miles, actual fill to fills, is 43+ mpg. I certainly expected better. We live in a very hilly part of NH. I drive very carefully as far as stops and starts. On highway I find a big difference between 65 and 70 MPH.

 

So I'm not bitterly disappointed when the bad mpg starts rolling in, can you tell me if my "commute" is setting me up "for a fall"? I'm taking delivery on my Seaside #8 the second week of January.

I commute 1 mile (!) to work but shuttle between 2 buildings, 1 mile apart, during the day (generally just once). Most of the driving is on the dead level in small town traffic. Our December was the coldest on record: many mornings below zero. The Prius will be garaged in above freezing temps. Walking would be the best option but temps and the shuttle between buildings make it unreasonable.

PUHLEEZE tell me that I'll do better than my 15 mpg VW Passat or this is going to be an expensive habit.......

 

Just picked up my 2006 silver Pkg 7 on Friday night.

No complaints here.

Got over 50 MPG from dealer to home (7 miles), got 50 MPG over 33 miles to get 3M clear bra put on (fantastic job by Dent Man in Central NJ - 3M authorized), and got about 47 MPG on trip back. Temp about 45, which will only be going down for a while.

Probably won't get that mileage on a pure highway run but we'll see.

Highway is pretty flat, speeds vary from 60 - 75.

Any thoughts on how to maximize MPG on this highway??

Thanks

 

I've been getting under 30 mpg for local driving over the past month. (Near Toronto, temperatures in the low 30s) What gives??

--Ed

 

Ray ~
Except for the oil factor, I've done all of these things and have never achieved more than 44 mpg, with 39 about the average. On my first oil change, I may ask for the Mobile 1, but can you tell me the theory here?

I rather firmly believe that there's a difference in efficiencies between different Priuses. While I expect to run at a lower mpg than most folks because I live on a hill, which is a net losing proposition, the flat city driving doesn't bring it back up enough to expect more than 45 mpg with this particular Prius. Several of the comments found on this forum would seem to validate this theory. I'm disappointed, but not enough to trade it in. Yet.

 

With a 1 mile commute you're Prius is pretty much just a normal gasoline engine car. So the only reason that it might do better than a Passat is that the gas engine has less horsepower than a VW Passat.

As far as the commute between the buildings, possibly you could get an advantage if you had an EV switch installed. With the EV switch might be possible to get the entire mile between building without burning any gas.

 

you will be in the mid 30's. unless you are in the artic, its nearly impossible to get lower. i had a 5 week training class last year starting the week after thanksgiving and it was 1.2 miles from my home. we had 90 min lunches so i went home. that made several short trips a day and my average was mid to upper 30's. which is better than any car i have ever owned during any season under any conditions

 

To some extent it's probably not valid to compare a Diesel to a Prius because you're making a decision to use a different fuel. If you ran a vehicle on vegetable oil but used twice as many gallons of vegetable oil than a gasoline powered Prius are you better or worse?

Gasoline gets different in formulation during the winter vs. the summer. I don't know if this happens for Diesel so this is one reason why it's not really valid to compare.

If you did want to compare Diesel vs. gasoline you really need to find some common ground, like taking into account cost per gallon of fuel. Diesel tends to be 1.05x as expensive per gallon vs. gasoline. So if we wanted to be fair a gasoline vehicle could do 1.05x worse than a diesel vehicle and cost the same in fuel.

So you get 48 mpg in a TDI. Then a gasoline vehicle needs to achieve 42.86 mpg to match that performance. I have a feeling that puts you squarely in the middle of the Toyota Prius's performance. The key factor will then be the distance you drive.

If you drove your TDI for only 1 mile every day in cold weather, I'd be curious if you could achieve 48 mpg. At 1 mile you might spend most of your time warming up the engine and the heater than actual driving.

The final thing that is a bit unfair about the comparison is that the TDI is a smaller car than the Prius. The weight of a car is probably the biggest factor in the cars mileage, moresoe than fancy hybrid technology.

One guy at work keeps bragging that his old Honda Civic of the 1980s always got 50 mpg no matter what. The econo cars of the 1980's probbably could give today's Prius serious competion. They were smaller and had gas engines equal or possibly even weaker than the gas engine on the Prius. I believe the TDI has less total horsepower than the Prius.

 

For my 24th tank:

546 miles using 8.654 gallons equals 63.09 mpg

Due to long drives with much warmer temps than average and did not see the yellow snowflake as often as last winter.

 

Wow. I hope to break 60 on a tank sometime.

I took my first extended highway trip this weekend. About 1100 total miles on my 2006. Speed limit was 70 so I set the cruise on 77 for the first 90 miles. Averaged 39.2 mpg. Then speed limit was 65 in OH so I set cruise to 72 for 96 miles and averaged 42.7 mpg. Drove without cruise the rest of the 400 mile trip at 44.1 mpg. Drove though a lot of hills in west PA and WV.

 

I don't know what to tell you pappy. My last tank was 650 miles at 57.9 MPG. My current tank is 455 miles at 58.7 MPG. This has been a fantastic winter with lows in the 40s and highs in the 70s. My current commute is all country roads in the 40-60 mph range. It's hilly, which knocks down the average a bit.

I have several freinds that own Prius as a result of mine. One drives mostly interstate and averages 45 MPG. His daughter has one that she drives on secondary roads and she gets low 50s. My wife has a commute similar to mine and gets 54. My other freind mostly drives in town and gets low 50s. Yet another has a long commute that is half highway miles and half in town and gets low to mid 50s. I use the tricks I stated earlier and that is why I get just a bit more at mid to upper 50s.

It's interesting to see this thread be revived 3 times in the last year.

 

Tank miles: 462
Car MPG: 51
Gallons Filled: 9.045
The MFD read about 51.4 approximately.
Although Dallas is warm during the
day, I work nights and normally
drive through temps of 30s-40s.
I've got a little over 5000 miles on
my car.

Esther

 

I get my second fillup tomorrow. So far it's running at 40.5mpg for the first tank. Nothing stellar, but we've been doing all short trip driving except for the maiden 171 mi. journey home (41.6). Weather has been crappy and I refuse to be cold or clammy in the car. Hell, normally the car is one of the few places where a person can crank the heat to max without a penalty. But, 40 mpg is almost twice what our Subaru or Honda get with same conditions, so I'm not complaining, especially if it gets a lot better in summer.
The early post about safety is correct though. In about 40 yrs of driving I have never had a car with such poor rear visibility. We've owned (older) Accord hatchbacks and have driven a few rental SUVs. They were never a problem for vision. ThePrius is horrible, especially out the right rear. If one has to make a merge into a Y intersection on the right, look out. (We've suddenly discovered that we have a lot of them). And on-screen heater controls suck. Especially because there is no way to make them persistant. The screen keeps switching to info or map. One should be able to drive and adjust the heater controls by feel, not by looking at them. And no, the steering wheel controls are not an adequate substitute, especially with on off, showery conditions like we have. It's good to see that they didn't keep the on-screen controls in the new Camry.

 

begreen-
There is a setting in the user setup menu that allows the screen to automatically revert back to the previous screen or not.