MPG recent issues

Living in the Detroit area, I often find that I go days without seeing another one. Being in the heart of the American auto company region has a side benefit. That is, you don't have to wait as long as someone in, say, California because most people here can't even consider it.

Anyway, today after yoga class I made my usual trip to Whole Foods and saw two other Priuses parked next to each other. That was amazing. When I came out of the store, the owners of one of the others were loading their groceries in to the back and I went up to them and said that I was used to being so unique with the only Prius in the lot and we got to talking. The man of the Prius, so to speak, mentioned a couple of things that were new to me. First, that when winter comes and they switch over to the winter mix with ethanol in it that I'll get almost 10 mpg less than in the summer.

The other thing was that I shouldn't let the tank get much below a quarter full because the fuel pump is inside the tank and needs to be cooled by the gasoline and if I run the tank down to empty that the fuel pump will burn out a lot sooner than it was meant to. That will take some getting used to because most of the cars I've had before were small and the mpg always went up in them the emptier the tank got.

One of the first things I do with a new car is find out just how far it can go on a tank of gas so that I know when to fill it up just before it runs out. Of course, the consumption display keeps a constant avg mpg so I don't have to work it out on a calculator so running on empty isn't necessary. It was interesting to note that as my Prius was on its last two bars on the display, my mpg had been inching up towards 57 mpg. I'm guessing that I may have gotten it higher had I run it down to empty but glad I didn't if the fuel pump's life was lengthened by filling up earlier.

 

Yes, Tony, I'm pretty much a rookie since I've only had my Prius for a couple of weeks or so. I'm not sure what's going on but I last filled up on Saturday and the MPG on the consumption display is reading a little over 58 and this with the auto a/c set at 76 which is perfectly comfortable for me. I knew that I was good at getting optimal mileage no matter which car I drove but this is getting scary. I doublecheck the diplay figure with the old-fashioned way (with a calculator) so I know that the consumption figure was accurate as of the last fill-up and I hit the reset button after filling up. I'd wanted a Prius since they first came out and I finally got what I wanted. I was driving a Corolla before this and it's great that for the first time ever, trading up to a bigger car actually resulted in better mileage.