60 mpg city?

I think the consensus is that the EPA "City" Test is really more like a "Suburb" Test. It's not really stop and go with lights every block. It's long runs at 35 miles an hour with occasional stops.

If you look at it from that standpoint, yeah, I can get 60 under those conditions easy.

But, in a real City, like where I live, it's less likely.

 

Most of my driving is in the city. I can see how the EPA got 60 mpg in the city but I don't think I will ever see it. For starters, the EPA tests with a warmed-up car. That 25-30 mpg first 5 minute bar that I always get will be gone. I think they also tested the vehicle averaging 30 mph on a 12 mile run with 20 stops, or something like that. I'm sure someone has the actual numbers. My understanding is that the vehicles are not even tested on the street. So that would mean no start and stop driving as we usually do.

I can average 55 mpg if I only drive in the city, and I don't do any short trips. Those short trips really mess up your mileage. For example, I will have 55 or 56 mpg on the display at the end of the week if I fill up on Monday. By the end of the weekend the display reads 53 mpg. The decrease is caused by some short trips and freeway driving. Can't do much about it, but I'm certainly not complaining about getting 53 mpg.

Jeff

 

Yeah, there is a big difference between 12 miles with 20 stop signs or lights and 12 miles with some quantity of people in front of you at each light, or especially, signs. Heck, chose the wrong time of day and I can have 20 stops in 1/8 mile, at a particular stop sign in town! And OF COURSE, it is uphill so you can't even stealth the thing real well.

 

You may find that the European test results are more realistic. In particular our Urban cycle is 2.5 miles from a cold start.

In Europe, the Prius is listed as 56.5mpg Urban, 67.3mpg Extra Urban, 65.7mpg Combined.

Converted into US gallons that's 47.1mpg Urban, 56.1mpg Extra Urban, 54.7mpg Combined.

That strikes me as a more realistic representation of what you Americans are getting than your own EPA figures.

A summary of the test cycles can be found here.

By the European combined mpg ratings, the Prius still is right at the top of all the cars in the UK. It's only beaten, just, by some diesel Renault Clios, Ford Fiestas, Citroen C2 and C3s, all of which are manual transmission superminis. And then miles ahead is the manual Honda Insight at 83.1mpg (Imperial). We don't get an automatic Insight or Civic IMA.

 

just a sidenote as most of the posters here already knows the story about the EPA.

i had a chance to deliver the morning paper here as i drove a friend on his route for 4 days. my experiment to do this through 2 full tanks was derailed when i was switched to the east coast schedule at work. but on that partial tank i got 46 mpg.

so even with excessive stops (about 264) the mileage leveled off to near 48 mpg after the car was warmed up. now because this was done a ways back, about half of the trip was done with the headlights off.

also the early morning mileage will be worse until the car warms up. every morning i will get a screen that shows only regen be returned to the battery when im doing less than 30 mph but will still register me as getting less than 30 mpg. obviously this occurs because the power screen doesnt always gives an accurate representation of what is happening.

as for the comparable mileage, i found that if i drive surface streets to work (about 11 miles) i will average better than 55 mpg. if i drive the freeway in the morning, its near 49 mpg. if i drive it in the middle of the day after i have been somewhere else, its about 52-53.

 

it's funny but i am able to routinely have intervals (on the consumption screen) at well over 60 in bumper to bumper (city) traffic. but on the highway i have trouble getting over 41-42.

i know it's me, if i drove at 55 i would go nuts

 

CIty MPG

I have my Prius in the Bronx, NY. I average about 44 in the summer, 38 in the winter. When I take it on the highway I get 57 mpg.

 

here is a screen shot of 3 99.9 mpg segments.

situation:

downtown Olympia, heavy congestion, many many lights with several stops and near stops. speeds bet 10-35 mph. road construction aggravated the situation today.

although the bars look impressive, my tank mpg only went up from 54.8 to top out at 55.5

i will say with the Prius, i find myself with much much more patience in traffic than with any car i have ever owned.

http://priuschat.com/forums/album_pic.php?pic_id=733

 

60 mpg

I drive 40 miles to work each day .. from near Dulles Airport through center of Washington DC to Andrews AFB. Like many others here, the first 5 minutes are consistently between 30 - 45 mpg. After that I range from 52 mpg to 77.5 mpg depending on which segment of the drive I am in. I leave for work at 5:00AM every day. Drive to work is consistently 58 mpg. Drive home from work I average about 53 mpg. I net about 55 mpg round trip for the commute. I attribute the dieffence in mileage mostly to the trip (on average) being downhill rom my home to Andrews AFB. For the life of the car so far I am averaging 53 mpg. But I have not been through a winter yet.

I posted the photo for fun. This is not from my normal commute. Condition, stuck in traffic outside Harrisburg PA on a Sunday afternoon (08/15/04). We moved about 2.5 miles during that 20 minute stretch.

Frenchofva Seaside Pearl #6 - Mellyn

 

I've only had my Prius for a little over three weeks, but I get around 53 mpg on a 55 mph highway (where I go 57 or 58), around 50 on 65 mph (I go 67 or 68, unless forced by traffic to go faster). In town, I have been very disappointed, and seem to be only getting around 35-38 mpg (small town, stops every 1-2 blocks most ways). When I was driving around a bigger town, I was able to drive 5 blocks or more without stops, and could get into electric mode only quite often, so seemed to be getting near 55 mpg.

 

effective in-town driving is the challenge and is learned behavoir. driving in areas you are familiar with, and i mean knowing general traffic patterns, timing of lights, etc all help.

most people seem to want to maximize the time they sit idling at the light or zipping in and around traffic in an attempt to better their position. (usually by 2-5 car lengths... although this KILLS your mpg's it will save you 10-45 secs on your commute time.)

the EPA figures are attainable as i have done it several times. but it requires minimal braking which means knowing the maximum speed you can travel at while using the minimal amount of velocity.

it took me about 300-500 miles to learn my car, its coasting patterns, braking and acceleration sensitivity and the fact that criuse control is an effective tool even at city street speed. using cruise control forces one to anticipate traffic flow way in advance and advance planning is the only way you will beat the EPA

so dont feel guilty when slowing down early and coasting up to an area where you know you are gonna come to a stop no matter how far away it is. its simply the smart thing to do.

i cant begin to describe the intensive feeling of superiority i feel when i see a huge SUV driving in this manner especially when knowing that his efforts might give him 15 mpg at the most...

 

New Prius Highway Mileage

On Friday, we took our new Prius on a highway trip of about 150 miles to help with the break-in process. Drove around 65 to 70 with aggressive acceleration when needed. Averaged 57.3 mpg - amazing!

 

It is doable, but depends on a lot of things. My July and August combined were 60 MPG, for a total of over 5000 miles. My route is suburban and urban driving, about a 70 mile round trip from a suburb to the center of Downtown St. Paul, about 12 miles of freeway and 126 stoplights and signs.

Other posters in this thread have hit on the high points. The main tricks are to relax, pay attention, leave plenty of space between your car and the one in front so you don't have to burn your energy at the brake pedal. Drive as far ahead of yourself as you can, and glide as soon as you know you will have to stop for a light. All of these are just good driving practice anyway, so it is no big deal.

Bill

 

My driving is all city, mostly a 4-mile commute, with occasional longer trips. Short trips = low mpg. But in spite of that, about 50 miles into the present tank the MFD is sitting at 50 mpg. I'm close to 5,000 miles on the odo, so the car is getting broken in, and the weather has been warm since my last fill-up.

But if I'm getting 50 mpg on mostly 4-mile trips, I bet I'd be in the upper 50's if not 60, if I had a 12 to 15 mile commute.

Hard to be sure, though. Those first 5 minutes get very low mpg, but they recharge the battery, so the next 5 minutes I'm running on a high SOC and getting better than average mpg. So maybe I'd only get 55 mpg on a longer commute.

I guess the bottom line is, I like living in a small city where nothing is very far away. I remember living in Guadalajara and riding the bus an hour to get to a street fair, and that was the Linea Turquesa that makes very few stops. By contrast, once when I was without my car I walked all the way across Fargo, west to east, and I think it took me about an hour. How many people can walk all the way across town in an hour?

 

On a side note, it's funny to see how different the bars on the MPG screen look compared to my liter/100km screen. Lower is better for me. And when I'm coasting or driving electric my liter/100km goes to 0.0. In the morning when the engine is warming up and the car isn't moving my usage becomes 99.9 liter/100 km.



[Broken External Image]:http://www.xs4all.nl/~krkr/toy_yoda/40.jpg

 

Batavier, did you change to blue background because you live below the sea level? :roll:

Nice dropping tendency there on the display. Where I live we have lots of small hills which makes it difficult to maintain steady consumption, but I'm only at my second tank yet (avg 4,7L/100km) so it's hard to tell what conditions really affects mileage. Wind has a great impact, thats for sure.

/Paj