I have rented the 2010 Prius on 9 different occasions and driven them normally around the Bay Area. 9 different cars. I would always put about 4 psi over stock for about 39 / 37. I would gas the car up just around the corner from Fremont Toyota, at shell (you don't know if car is topped off when picking it up). I'd reset the tripmeter (FE indicator). The cars were always reading over 50 MPG. Usually about 52 or 53 MPG. One time I took a III up Hwy 9 out of Saratoga, climbing the hills. The car was reading 49 MPG while doing a pretty good pace along Skyline Blvd. When I came back down into San Mateo, FE was back up to 52 MPG. No pulse and glide, just reasonable starts off stop light and easy braking. The cars always measured over 50 MPG at the pump - 9 different rentals. IIRC, the first rental, a Prius V clocked about 51 MPG too.
Hey DaYooper, No highway in that part. I park near the exit of the parking lot, facing out, of course For the first couple minutes I get up to and hold 35-40 mph to get OK mileage while the engine is running. I drive with load there a bit, since there's a stop sign at the end of the road. It's backroads, so I can sometimes slow gradually from 40 mph to much slower by the time I get to the first stop sign if no one's behind me. A couple more turns and stops let me get into stage 4, then it's pulsing and gliding, mostly between 25 and 35 mph I'd say, sometimes up to 40 and down to 20. The result you see there is pretty typical for those first miles of that particular route in this warmer weather, not an outlier. EDIT: PS, just saw, no, battery definitely not fully charged. I don't look there, but I would estimate around 55-58% SOC, so 5, almost six bars.
Just a thought, but if you park deep into a parking lot, then you may be draining the battery. It's counter-intuitive, but using the battery too much actually reduces gas mileage, since all the energy ultimately comes from gas.
