Has anyone run a Prius out of fuel?

I only ran out once, but I have been keeping track of issues when you run out.
Ran out of fuel AND battery!! | Page 3 | PriusChat

(In this thread the OP wants to blame his car for not being smarter than he is)

 

That thread made me laugh. So if this happened in the 1700's, the driver of a horse and carriage wondered why the horse died and won't come back to life after it died of exhaustion and starvation.

SGH-T999 ?

 

Ha!!! Good analogy. Moral of the story is....don't take a chance and run out of fuel. Feed that thing the oats and hay it needs when you get low.

 

I have done it on my second tank of gas with GenII IT STOPS with a lots of warning lite... I had charges in the battery but no you can not drive it .. I had to literraly push the car from the road while wife was steering ...

I have not done it with Gen3

 

I remember reading that Bob said that once the gen III ran out of gas, the eco light shuts off. That's the only visual warning you get. Once the eco light on the dash shuts off, it goes into Ev limp mode til the hv battery dies. I have personally driven mine 90 miles after the first low fuel beep to get 700 mile tank. That's the furthest I've driven on a near empty tank.

 

Like I said before, computers can take over so much of a system that they will defy human logic. It's been my experience that the more complicated they get, the more counter intuitive they are. Think about it, why on earth should you not be able to restart a vehicle that runs out of fuel? You would think there would be a "reset" button somewhere.

I may sound cynical here, but that's 30+ years of working with computer and electronic systems talking.

 

Thanks for bringing this up. I had forgotten about the ECO light on the dash shutting off if you are in ECO mode when you happened to run out of fuel. I would have to agree that that will really be the only visual warning you get until the Prius literally dies on you and you are stick in the middle of the road.

As other's have warned in the past, it is not a good idea to run out of gas in a Prius. Actually, that same applies to all ICE fuelled by gasoline or any other type of fuel. Once the fuel is exhausted, you end up having to push the car. However the Prius add's another problem. Once it dies, IIRC the parking pawl engages whereas you can't push the car. The pawl is protected by software to not engage until a certain speed is met, then the pawl will engage. I believe it is somewhere around 3 to 4 MPH. If it does engage while the Prius is moving, there will be a sudden stop with a sharp jarring effect on both passengers and any loose object within the Prius. The drive wheels then will have to raised off of the ground in order to move said Prius.

If I am incorrect, will someone please post saying so.

Best advice, refuel when you hit two pips or maybe even one pip or push on till the flashing pip. Once you see that flashing pip it would be advisable to add fuel then rather than continuing on down the road.

Ron (dorunron)

 

Hi Greg,

Do what Bob Wilson did. Put some fuel in a gas can and drive it until it runs out. Put the gas in that is the can, get it going again and make note of how far you actually went. Just remember it is NOT a good idea to drain the "traction battery". It has been said that cycling the battery that deep will shorten the overall life of said battery. If I were to test it, I would be running in ECO mode and watching for the light to go out on the dash.

Its your car and your choice. For me, I am not going to risk it. The risk is not worth the effort involved since gas is available on most corners as long as you are in a populated area. If you are out in the boondocks, then it becomes your responsibility to make certain you ALWAYS have sufficient fuel to get you to the next station and even further in case the next stop is closed and or their pumps are not working.

Ron

 

You don't have to drive in ECO mode. Normal mode will work too. It's the ECO indicator not lighting up that tells you you've ran out of gas.

 

Correct me if I am wrong. You are saying the ECO indicator you are speaking of is the one over the HSI indicator. Is that correct?

Ron

 

Yes the ECO indicator on the HSI
Edit: Actually, my mistake. It's not the ECO indicator on the HSI that gets turned off when you're out of gas. It's the power arrow from the engine/motor that gets turned off.

 

I have run out of gas several times, with my 2004 and 2009 Prius. It goes about 1,000 feet, then stops. However, I once ran out on a freeway. After sitting with the car off for a while, I tried it again, and was able to crawl on electric power for about 1/4 mile to a highway maintenance crew, who had a can of gas. I had gone 12 miles after the gas gauge beeped empty.

 

A while back before purchasing, we'd just rented a '12 or '13 Prius for a weekend to try it out for a long trip I had to take and lot of family errands we needed to run. Had just picked up mom 22.6 mi. from home. Had just gone down to a single gas meter pip. So, I figured, at 50mpg, there should have been plenty of gas left. Mom kept pestering me asking if we had enough gas, and I said, "Of course we do. It's a Prius! It's got another FIFTY miles left, at least!" (She has a habit of getting paranoid about things that would never even happen.)

So of COURSE what happened was that, after driving 14 miles, the Prius, apparently feeling it didn't like that, decided to cut off the headlights, and start fading the internal displays in and out until they were fully dark. By the way, it was also night time and we were coming back along a dark freeway. It started to run a lot slower too.

Now.. it doesn't help that when dad was alive, he used to habitually allow himself to run out of gas either, usually during our morning school-work commutes which would leave my brothers and I late to school by around 45 - 60 mins while we waited for a highway patrol to chance during rush hour and call for a roadside assist (oh, the days before mass cellphones). Mom started freaking out saying the Prius was such an unreliable turning off all the lights when it's nighttime, too newfangled a car with it's on-off power button instead of a key and funny shift knob, and how I was just like dad.

Anyway, I observed that, like our older cars I remembered, the Prius seemed to lose full power, though not as severely and rapidly as our older gas cars. For whatever reason, it faded the displays a few times before blacking them out completely along with the headlights. We drove at reduced speeds down the half stretch between freeway exits and made it to a gas station.

After refueling and checking the fuel tank capacity in the owner's manual, the car apparently still should've had at least half a gallon of gas left if not a full gallon. It would've seemed like the battery was low, but it lit right back up instantly after a full fill up and turning it on, and I didn't remember the battery seeming particularly low on the readout. So I got the impression the Prius had its own little buffer amounts for safety purposes where it "complains" and becomes uncooperative long before it actually runs dry.

 

If sounds as if you were really out of gas and running strictly on the battery, which has a very short range. But much of your description doesn't match up with the experience of one of our resident engineers, who has intentionally run the car out of fuel many many times for fun, sport, and a wide variety of engineering tests: [WARNING] Running out of gas (Gen III).

To paraphrase the low-fuel guidelines of another regular poster, more specific to the fickle fuel bladder of the GenII Prius:

* With you mother-in-law in the car, fill up at 3 bars. She will never let you or anyone else forget that you stranded her.

* With your wife in the car, fill up at 2 bars. She will never let you forget that you stranded her.

* When alone, fill up at 1 bar. No one else needs to know that you got stranded.

(While I do run my cars deep into low fuel range, to check their true ranges, the first forays are always carefully planned for benign situations where the cost of screwing up is minimal. In particular, no passengers to get upset.)

 

After reading many posts on this site and others, I have adopted the habit of checking my mileage when the beep and last pip starts flashing. From there I allow myself another 50 miles before I get panicky about refueling. The most I've ever added to refill my 11.9 gallon tank is 9.8 gallons. I always go one click past the first click when filling and 90% of my fill ups are at the same Costco station and if possible the same pump. I always reset the trip indicator and record my gallons used, miles driven, and cost per gallon. This seems to work well for me where I live. My wife may get nervous when she notices the pip flashing but I just point out the miles I've driven and reassure her we will be fine. Total miles on tank is usually between 450 to 520 miles, depending on weather and other driving conditions. I'm not advising others to use my method but if you drive alot it can get annoying to fill up too frequently while driving a Prius. I do sometimes wish they had a larger tank but that would add weight and bring down the overall mpg.

 

Oh, it got along at slower (sub-30s mph) speeds. And the listed fuel tank capacity minus the amount refueled indicates there was around a gallon or more left in the tank, so I don't believe the rental actually ran dry. The lights all going out was pretty unexpected behavior though (and undesirable at night).

I agree about not stranding passengers but knowledge gained from methodical empirical testing is valuable. I would, of course, bring spare gas in a can on such tests. What's disconcerting is "shutdown" types of behaviors before the final pips are gone and obstructing the ability to safely get to a gas station you clearly would have sufficient fuel to reach.

 

If the question is has anyone run a Prius out of Fuel?, then I think the answer is a resounding YES.

You can reference any of the provided above links to various threads.

My personal stance, is apart from any engineering curiosity about what might happen, for most of us, in most situations, it simply is NOT a good idea. So unless you are "safely" and with preparation for the potential outcome, preparing the Prius for the reality of an out of fuel "experiment"...then YES..you can run The Prius out of fuel BUT NO...it's NOT a good idea, and the Prius like most vehicles IS NOT designed to be ran to empty.