2024 Prius Limited AWD Range Questions

Based on my experience, that matches the "safety margin" built in to the low fuel warnings of my past 2010 and 2012 Prius, and current 2024 RAV4 Prime. And is similar to the warning lights or just 'needle on E' gauges of most of the other-brand cars I have driven over the past half century.

Here is what your Owner's Manual shows, but my experience is that my OMs have understated the margin, the actual margins have been higher, like you have found and what Tideland describes:



MPG is far more variable than many drivers realize, depending on conditions: engine warmup status, load, temperature, rain, snow, wind speed and direction, mountain slope, external cargo carriers, etc. And the car has no way to forecast what conditions you will encounter just ahead. So most car makers put in some safety margin on their low fuel warnings to save most drivers from their own miscalculations and MPG ignorance. If the 'miles remaining' gauge truly reflected average driving conditions, then numerous drivers will get caught short on the below-average days or trips, leading to a lot of angry calls to Customer Service with complaints like "your miles-remaining gauge said I had enough miles left to get there, but then it ran out of gas and left me stranded on a dark and stormy night [ in the middle of nowhere | far up the mountain pass road | in a blizzard ] in a place with no cell service to call for roadside assistance."

Building in a traditional amount of safety margin goes a long way towards reducing those angry calls to Customer Service. It won't stop all drivers from running out of gas. But for those who still do run out, the gauges and warnings will have been lit long enough for them to understand that they can blame only themselves, not the car maker.

This is just one form of 'Customer Expectation Management'. There are additional forms of it built in to most cars these days.

 

Sounds about the same as mine. My average fill ups on the light are 8.5 gal. I typically fill right when the light comes on but I feel like its usually stating higher than 20mi left at that point. I pushed it and ran the estimated range down to 1 mile last week. Tbh I didn't think about checking how much I put back in at the time.. I think Tideland is correct with the reserve quantity based on other Toyotas I have owned.

 

I get about 350 miles of displayed range in the winter(which is really about 400 miles including the safety margin), and the displayed range gradually increases to almost 450 miles by mid-summer(550 miles with the safety margin).

 

I pushed my 2010-2012 Prii past 0 miles numerous times, the farthest being about 60 miles past. Based on the refill quantity, it still had nearly a gallon left.

Another 2010 owner (I'm currently not naming for reasons not relevant here) intentionally ran that Prius (and a previous one) out of gas many times, for a wide variety of engineering and fuel and other tests, reporting many technical findings back to us. In his tests for Gen3 range (and for discovering its fuel starvation behavior), he went a bit over 130 miles past the Low Fuel warning light, which lit up about 25-30 miles before Distance To Empty fell to 0 miles.

Other drivers beware: that was a different model year, he drove at moderate speeds with better MPG than many of today's freeway speeds, took along a spare can of fuel, and carefully selected the time and area and circumstances where he'd run out of gas. Don't tempt fate by running low in circumstances where running dry would be inconvenient or worse.

Later, I ran my Subaru all the way to actual fuel starvation, and found its refill quantity dead-on its claimed amount (when rounded to the nearest tenth of a gallon). Though its low fuel warning lights had a bit less safety margin, and its Distance To Empty gauge had no safety margin. Fortunately, its earlier low fuel warning stages were more glaring, multi-colored, and harder to miss that the Prius warning.

 

I'm routinely at 0 MTE (miles to empty) when I fill up. I've actually ran my car from South Lake Tahoe back to Sacramento once (90+ miles). The low fuel indicator came on just as I crested the summit. Normally I wouldn't worry about it, but I had 2 adult passengers onboard. It was mostly down hill on the way back that gave my traction battery a chance to recharge. When I eventually refueled, there was still a 0.75 gallon in the tank, when I did the math. I was joking with my passengers, that they've have to get out and push, they pointed out every gas station we passed on the way back down the mountain.
The computers can only give you estimates - you need to make your own guesstimate under real life driving conditions. I would've never attempted the above in winter or wet driving conditions.

 

I try not to take it down near 0 MTE just because I don't want to put extra wear on the fuel pump. The pump uses the gas in the tank to keep the housing cool, and running the tank near empty can cause it to overheat and prematurely fail.

That being said, Toyota makes some of the most robust OEM fuel pumps, so you're not going to kill the pump running it near empty every now and then. But getting in the habit of keeping it near empty and only filling the tank partway up is a recipe for damage. And the side effect of the Toyota pumps being so well built is that they're pretty darn expensive* to replace. So best practice is to always fill all the way up, and try not to let the tank drop much below 1/4 or 1/8 tank(roughly 3-4 gallons).


*I think I'm looking at the correct part, and it's $520 MSRP for just the pump, and $550 MSRP for the whole pump/gage assembly.

 

Hi Steph, The fuel gauges are only one set of gauges in the newer Prii (plural for Prius) that confuse many new owners. There are many gauge set in the car that work together. You're not the only person to ask about the fuel and estimated miles to empty gauges. There are many posts asking how they work and what to expect form them.

 

Whenever I refill close to 0 MTE, it usually takes about 9.2 gallons.

Your MPG is on the low side and perhaps that is because you drive a lot of fast highway miles? When I have tanks like that on long highway road trips, I find that when I fill at 0 MTE it takes even less gas, more like 9 gallons or even less. If that is your case, mostly fast highway miles, just a guess on my part, but maybe the computer does an even worse job of calculating MTE.

(Note: My Fuelly tag below is broken - I have 61 fill-ups currently in my 2024, not 1!)