Gas mileage driving in the mountains

My fiance and I decide to go for a drive up to Lake Tahoe on Saturday. She wanted to go to this organic restaurant she loves, Sprouts, and I thought it would be a great trip to test out Prius and see how it handles going up the hill and at high altitude.

First of all, the high altitude concern was no problem, it drove the same at 6,200 feet as it does at 4,000 ft (Tahoe and Reno). Secondly, it climbed Mt. Rose highway with no problems whatsoever. The speed limit is 45 on that road and the prius had absolutely no problems sticking to that (it had plenty of power and could have easily gone faster if needed).

I gassed up in Reno just before we left and reset the mileage on the MFD. On the way up I averaged approx. 30 mpg (maybe a little over 30 but I can't remember exactly. I've never seen the bar graph look so bad though.) By half-way up the mountain my battery indicator was on it's last purple bar, and remained there there rest of the way up the hill.

The descent was fun -- the regenerative brakes, and some engine braking filled the battery to full green in a very short distance. We then drove around Tahoe quite a bit, where it drove normally, and then returned home.

The drive home was mostly down-hill (steep) and it maintained a full green battery for most of the drive down the hill and a mpg of 99.9+. It's amazing how anxious the prius is to use the battery when you finally reach level ground with a full-green battery. It took me +45mph on all battery for a couple minutes before it felt it had used up enough of the excess charge. At that time, my MFD showed 4 full bars (20+ minutes) of 100 mpg and an overall average for the trip of 55mpg. I have pictures, but on my other computer. I will amend the post with them later tonight.

In all, I was very, very impressed with how the car handled going up and down. The CVT felt great going up the mountain and I am very happy with the overall mpg.

 

Coming down...
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And a couple minutes after being on a level road again...
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