New to me Gen 3 is not living up to fuel economy expectations

Hello, there, fellow Gen 3 owners and drivers. I have been (and still am) a very happy Gen 2 owner since 2017 and over 135K miles. My dear 2007 is getting long in the tooth with 310K miles and I have now bought a 2011 Gen 3 with only 120K miles and very good maintenance record from a person I know (they take very good care of their things). I have been driving this very clean Gen 3 for a few months now and am having hard time getting much more than 41 MPG. I do not hypermile and am not interested in "tips and tricks" to do that. I drive my Gen 2 like a normal car and I consider myself to be a fairly spirited driver. You can check my Fuely numbers for my Gen 2. It's 45 MPG over the last 7 years (I log every single fill up). I realize it's not as high as some here, but it's ok with me since I just drive this car as a car, not a hobby. So if I need to flog it to proerly and safely merge on the highway, I do it. I drive mostly country roads and once a week or so I make a highway trip to the big city (of Boston), which is about 200 miles round trip. This has been my pattern with Gen 2 and is also the same for the Gen 3. Yet, even if I try to be "good" with the gas pedal, I still struggle to get anything other than high 30's - low 40's MPG on this car. I realize that now that the temps are going low it's not going to do well, but I bought the car when the weather was ideal for good fuel economy, in the 60's 70's most of the time. Still poor fuel economy on this car. I like the car a lot. It's smooth, quiet and drives well, but about 10% worse on gas than my old Gen 2 with 310K miles and burning lots of oil. Could it be the tires? I run Nokian WR2 Gen 4 on the Gen 2. They are LRR. The Gen 3 has GoodYear Assurance WeatherReady (whatever those are). They are almost brand new and I will drive on them for now. I realize tires can effect fuel economy as much as 5%. I have not checked the spark plugs. Tire pressure is at 40psi. My driving style is the same as on Gen 2. I drive like normal and if I need to get out of my own way, I go ahead and step on that gas pedal. I have to work really hard to get anything lower than 45 mpg on the Gen 2 (in fall/spring weather). Usually it's closer to 50 mpg. But this Gen 3 struggles to break 40. So about 10% worse than an old Gen 2 with 310K miles. Is this the norm or I need to look for problems in this new to me car?

Thank you all in advance!

 

It feels normal, whatever that is. Nothing of note. They feel like ok tires. I do not think they are officially LRR, though. Not sure about that, but I can not see an LRR mark on them. In any case, they are brand new in July, so I am stuck with them for now.

Come spring I will clean the EGR cooler and do other Gen 3 things to it. I was really going to skip Gen 3, but Gen 4 is more expensive than I can afford at the time and also some of the design decisions in that generation of Prius are kind of deal breakers for me. Shiny reflective surfaces on the dash are just dangerous, not to mention ugly. Aesthetically I can live with the ugly duckling, but there is definitely a drop off in user experience even from Gen 2 to Gen 3, though Gen 3 still has a very sensibly designed UX (user experience). No shiny surfaces to distract and bother the driver, no huge screens and plenty of knobs and buttons for frequently used functions. I must be getting old, but the idea of the entire user interface relegated to a touch screen makes me not want to drive. That is, of course the whole point, I suppose, in transition to driver-less cars. I am totally fine with driver-less, but the in-between stage is terrible. Give me the knobs and buttons and levers to operate my vehicle or make it so as to not involve me at all.

 

The mileage envy I experience is to my own Gen 2 Prius with 310K miles. I am not a new Prius driver. Been driving my '07 since 2017 and averaging 45 MPG since then (I log every fuel up). I figure the later generation of Prius should go up in fuel economy, not down. Yet my experience with Gen 3 is about 10% decrease in fuel economy from Gen 2. I still think there are some underlying issues and I will eventually get back the 10%, but I may be wrong and it just is what it is. I am just disappointed that Gen 3 has worse fuel economy and some slightly worse design choices from Gen 2. Gen 2 really is the perfect Prius. I just wish they weren't too old to find a good one any more. My 2007 with 310K miles and getting 45 MPG with my style of driving is still on its original traction battery and seems to be going strong. I have rust problems on rockers and oil consumption on it, but it still runs and drives very well and I use it a lot without babying it. I do my own maintenance on it, which does not end up being a whole lot. It's a perfect car! The jury is out on Gen 3.

 

I will definitely do that. It's just that the rear brakes were serviced by the dealer (on previous owner's watch) very recently. But I will most definitely test the rear wheels for spinning free. Thank you for the suggestion.

 

I am not going to touch the egr cooler and most under the hood stuff until spring. My hands don't work in the cold anymore. I live in New England. I will, however lift up the rear and feel the rear wheels. The rear brakes were just recently changed by a Toyota dealership, but we all know how that can be... The disks look like they are getting full pad coverageon the outside surfaces. Inside surfaces are a mystery at this point. The previous owner was fastidious, but not in any way a DIY owner. Took the car to the dealer for most things.

Coolant was replaced, routine stuff done. Spark plugs were replaced , I think. It's hard to interpret the document on the Toyota Owners website. I will get to them in due time. In the meantime I will suffer with MPG envy

 

So I lifted each rear wheel off the ground and spun it to make sure rear wheels do not drag. They do not appear to have any more "drag" than on my 2007 Gen 2, which I also lifted to compare. I hear very slight rubbing sound from the pads, but the wheel goes around a few revs when I give it a good spin by hand. Also, the wear of the rotors is very uniform. We had rain overnight, so the rotors had a rusty patina from it and I took the car for a small ride to clear that out and when I came back and looked a the rotors, they were very nicely shiny and uniformly worn. I will probably check them closer in the spring, but at this time I would say they are not dragging.

 

I updated above. I lifted up the rear wheels and made sure they do not drag. That is all I got. I will probably order a Prolong harness for the battery as I already own the Prolong charger and discharger. The battery seems ok and reports about 65% life expectancy on Dr. Prius. It's about as good as my '07. Everything being equal, Gen 3 just seems to have worse fuel economy than Gen 2, which I did not expect. I thought Toyota was in the Prius line for fuel economy and despite bigger engine (and no improved performance from Gen 2) would provide improved fuel economy over Gen 2. Not the case in my very short sample.