Decreasing Gas Mileage in 2002 Prius

This sounds an awful lot like what I recently experienced with my 2001 Prius, especially losing the cruise control and the decreasing mpg. The Toyota dealer found everything wrong except the hybrid battery which was the real culprit. I just got it replaced the other day by the re-manufacturing outfit in NC which was a real success and a significant savings. All other problems magically went away! Warning lights went off, cruise control came back, mileage is actually better than when it was new.

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I have a fairly new battery in my 2001, but I don't get anywhere near what I used to get for MPG. I used to be one of those rare lucky people who got 50-52 MPG, now I can only get in the 40-44 range.

My suspicion is that a big contributor is ethanol. It's hard to find a gas station that isn't using an ethanol mixture now in the gas they sell, the minimum seems to be around 10%. My MPG started dropping around the time all the ethanol buzz was going around a few years ago.