My City MPG scored low (40)

The first time I drove in LA in 1972, I have a vivid memory of an on-ramp in Riverside about 10:00 PM. As I was taking that curve, my eyes teared up worse than the Marine Corps training, gas chamber a year earlier. Fortunately I had adopted the practice of keeping a damp t-shirt by the seat to wipe my face.

The wet t-shirt was there because earlier that day I found wiping my face gave some relief. That was all it took to restore clear vision but nothing helped on the throat tickle except heading towards San Diego.

In the early 1980s, I attended a DECUS convention in Anaheim and remember the days of gray (it was December.) But the air didn't have the 'bite' I had remembered from just 10 years earlier. Still murky, I could not separate the high humidity from the pollution but things less bad for that short week.

In 2004 my wife and I took a trip to San Francisco related to a work assignment at Ames. I remember beautiful days of driving without the throat choking crud of 30 years earlier. Except for the wild fires, my understanding is the LA area is a lot nicer to drive around than in the past. Although perhaps tongue in cheek, some have posted that the air from a Prius exhaust can be somewhat lower in hydrocarbons than the outside air.

For the OP, next time you do the urban trip, be sure an reset the trip meter and take a photo at the end showing distance, MPG, and average speed. This will give a lot of clues that combined with the route will explain in quantitative numbers, the driving style.

All it takes is 'time in seat' to learn how to exploit the Prius for high urban mileage and folks here have a lot of excellent suggestions. But even so, 40 MPG in even a short, urban drive, beats the heck out of just about any other non-plugin vehicle. Heck, it is twice as good as "Top Gear" got in their diesel-Prius stunt with the 'Stig' mashing and braking in "B" around their track.

Bob Wilson

 

Sounds like your right tool for your job

Bob Wilson

 

EPA MPG Estimate. It's all about the way the Prius is driven, or any other car, for that matter. I get great mpg with ours in traffic... way better with Prius than I can manage in the new G2 Insight. Prius loves slow city traffic. In congested Tampa traffic last summer, with A/C running (or you die), the red Prius pictured there on the left indicated 60-62 mpg. Did the same in famous Washington DC gridlock. The Insight mpg drops in heavy traffic, although it seems to love 40-50 mph traffic flow, but not the stop and go that Prius shines in.

Got the Insight to 58 mpg indicated last weekend in mostly rural with a little town driving included... then this week on the way home from a bicycle ride, I hit a little slow going through Portland (plus I had the bicycle hanging off the hitch rack), so my mpg went down to 56 point something. and then never recovered on the way up to our house. Portland is near sea level, and I live at about 700 feet above, so there's a climb in the 27 miles that I covered from town.

Darned EPA MPG Estimate inaccuracies! The G2 Insight's EPA sticker says 44 highway/41 city/42 combined. I'm complaining! Prius fuel mileage is slowly moving up this time of year, around 53 mpg at the moment. This is wife's commute, 25 miles to the coast, some short distance midday city driving and then the return commute home back up the hill by evening.