95% freeway miles - What can I expect?

In my experience, you should easily get at least 46-52mpg in your driving. I did a 52-mile round-trip from Santa Clara, CA to San Mateo, CA last weekend, averaging around 70mph on the freeway and I got 51.5mpg for the whole trip. About four miles of it was suburban streets.

My average mpg is usually closer to 45mpg because I have a short commute, and that's most of my driving. I do not drive to get high mpg, but slightly faster than the flow of traffic (not enough to be excessive or draw attention to me).

 

I'd agree with PriusEnvy.

Of all the things that hurt mileage, short trips are the worst. Most of my drives are 1-2 miles each day, and this negatively affects the mileage.

I rarely drive into work (I ride a vanpool), but when I do it's about 26 miles (in Seattle in the PNW). With the warmer weather, I've been getting ~50 MPG on these trips, without any special driving (i.e., watching the MPG monitor) at all. (In the depths of winter, it was more like ~45 MPG).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(emtownsend\";p=\"73706)</div>

Less so than in an old-technology car because the A/C doesn't require the engine to run. In Dallas I get better MPG in warm weather even with the A/C running all the time because the engine warms itself faster and runs more efficiently.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(richard schumacher\";p=\"73709)</div>

Other than the engine needing to run to generate electricity. The real savings with the electric A/C compressor is that it's variable speed, so it only has to run fast enough to keep up with the cooling load. I run my car with the A/C in Auto Mode almost exclusively and 50 MPG is my average on the highway (between 65-75 MPH and with hills) using the cruise control.

 

i did some testing last fall after it got cool enough to run without air conditioning and my results were

70 mph = 50.5 mpg
65 mph = 52.5 mpg
60 mph = 55 mpg

now running the air ( i like it cool bout 68-69º) reduced those figure bet 1-2 mpg. for some reason, even on similar days, the mileage never seemed to level out very well. all the mileage figures were gathered on days when i drove at least 50 miles one way and encountered no major traffic issues.

just to let you know, once i hit traffic due to an accident going the other way and got about 65 mpg averaging bet 25-40 mph WITH the air on... in fact it was one of the hottest days we had last summer with temps over 100º. in any other car i would have been fuming but my Prius was totally cool and collected. that was when i knew that buying this car was one of the best decisions i had ever made.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(htmlspinnr\";p=\"73724)</div>

Sounds like about the most optimal Prius-driving travel imaginable.