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Now that was cool! Run out of gas today.

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by rwithop, May 26, 2005.

  1. rwithop

    rwithop New Member

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    OK. I know this topic has probably been done before, but it is a fun reminder.

    What happens when you run out of gas?

    I'll tell you...'cause it happened to me today. (Very cool.)


    ------------
    The Short:
    It switches into electric only mode. You keep cruising, with much reduced power, but the battery takes you to where you need to go. No more stopping right there on the freeway like an idiot.

    ------------
    The Long:
    First you get an "Add Fuel" warning, when you are on your last "bar" of fuel. This means you have about a gallon worth of gas left. When you totally run out of gas, you get a red triangle warning on the dash and the screen, as well as some very severe sounding maintence warnings. Based upon the number and tone of the warnings, it looks like your car is about to have a nuclear implosion. Then the car really lags and switches into battery power mode. What better way to up your mpg than full electric mode!

    Anyway its fun. Try it out for yourself.
     
    #1 rwithop, May 26, 2005
  2. DanMan32

    DanMan32 Senior Member

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    Toyota seriously frowns on you doing this. The main reason I believe is because you can potentially drain the battery below the margin it would normally allow, though the ECU's would shut the system down before you got down to a dangerous SOC.

    How many miles did you go from it starting to blink to when you got the Christmas Tree display, and what was your MPG?
    I've gone 87 miles before I chickened out, at 57MPG
     
    #2 DanMan32, May 26, 2005
  3. kadi

    kadi New Member

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    It works great unless there's a steep incline it can't handle. Then it freaks out and locks up -- not fun.

    Yes, I ran out of gas. Not only am I slow, I'm also stupid.
     
    #3 kadi, May 26, 2005
  4. rwithop

    rwithop New Member

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    I believe I got 53 miles at 48 mpg after the blinking started.

    I think the car could go further if:

    a) I pushed it more...(I still had two bars of battery power after all.)
    B) The car was older.

    The car is only 6 months old so I think the fuel meter will be more accurate after its broken in.
     
    #4 rwithop, May 26, 2005
  5. bookrats

    bookrats New Member

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    Which is very similar to the symptoms of the "Car Engine Conks Out" (13 reported cases) going around all the newspapers lately.

    My feeling is that many (not all, though) of the "this has happened to me too" are the out-of-gas situations you describe above.
     
    #5 bookrats, May 26, 2005
  6. kidtwist

    kidtwist New Member

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bookrats\";p=\"92998)</div>
    I don't know. Is that problem occurring in Europe? If it's not you may be right. They don't have the bladder, which seems to be the cause of the inaccurate gas gauge.
     
    #6 kidtwist, May 26, 2005
  7. DanMan32

    DanMan32 Senior Member

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    53/48=1.10 gallons.

    87/57=1.52 gallons and I hadn't run out yet.

    one could say it depends how much the tank was filled, but we're talking about a supposedly known point; where the last pip starts blinking. The amount filled would affect total mileage, or mileage from full before first pip disappears.
     
    #7 DanMan32, May 26, 2005
  8. LionKing

    LionKing New Member

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    I ran out of gas last week and kinda freaked me out, thought it was the Highway Stall thing cause I was doing about 70MPH so I pulled over, started it up and had to cross 5 lanes of traffic to exit doing 25mph on freeway and took 12.24 Gallons to fill up. in the book it says 11.9 so go figure...
     
    #8 LionKing, Jul 18, 2005
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