Gas gauge does not agree with Drive Information display

Because people are stupid and run it down to 0 pips or miles to go all the time. If people's cars ran out of gas when they said 0miles to go, people would also complain. This way there is more anxiety to people that run the tank really low before fillups.

For instance my DMC12 runs out of gas anywhere between an 1/8th of a tank left and empty. So if the car reported you had 2 gallons or 100 miles left and then ran out of gas... That would suck too.

Fuel gauges are not precision and since the car cannot tell if you are going to sit and idle in a parking lot for hours or drive 100mph on the highway, the drive range is just a gross estimate that should be taken to be about as accurate as a Picasso is to reality. It sort of makes sense if you stare at it, but otherwise it could be anything.

 

As soon as it hits 0 miles it will drop to 1 flashing bar. You still have ~1.5 gallons in the tank left, so your final mileage will vary.

 

I have noticed that full, half and 0 (as long as you add the hidden remainder) are all pretty accurate... everything in between is a crap shoot.

 

We've had this discussion a few too many times and people get angry quickly about the gas gauge. Check out the thread about the guy that had a tendency to run out and then get angry about it.

 

...which is why it's called a GUESS gauge by many of us!

 

I like that. The LEAF has the guess-o-meter and the Prius has the guess gauge. It really isn't any different from any other gas gauge that I have ever seen though.

 

The error isn'that great. First, that 7 miles to go is not until you run out of gas but until you are running on reserve, meaning you're low in gas and need to look for a gas station. Second if you needed 7.8 gallons to refill from 2 bars that means approximatey 18% of the tank was the gas volume. Since there are 89 bars 2 bars is about 2.3 gallons left in the tank. Considering the inaccuracy of the consistency of refilling to the same level thats pretty close. If you overrfilled the levelb y .3 gallons, easy to do, you agree pretty well with the drive info. Course, ask yourself do we need most of the info presented? We might be better off with larger font data on important stuff like coolant temp and time rather than the cute stuff shown.

 

89 bars?

 

last year I ran my Prius C completely out of gas, (I got abused by many folks on here ) but 35,000 miles later still going strong, well when I filled the tank to the filler cap (again, I got abused by people on here ) it took 10.4 gallons

 

I love my Prius C - but actually this is the most annoying part of my experience. The car goes from three bars to blinking one bar very fast and will runs out of gas very quickly once the last bar is blinking.

 

If over 50 miles is very quickly... you would absolutely hate my wifes Mazda 6. Her car gets maybe 20 miles after her gas light comes on. But then her car doesn't get over 500 miles per tank either.