New to me Prius, not good mileage :(

When you turn the Prius off, it displays the mileage and some other data for that specific trip, from power on to power off. What kind of mileage numbers are being displayed? The data is only displayed for a short time after power off.

Also, what does the battery charge indicator look like before you power off? If it's lower the next morning, then something is discharging your battery over night. If the same thing is happened during the day while you are at work, the engine has to run too much to recharge the battery.

What does the circuit display show as far as energy going back into the battery, etc.?

 

one suggestion, read the owners manual. the advice here is all over the board, because we have very little information. and also, study the other 10,000 why is my mileage bad threads. perhaps you can learn something from others in the same boat.

 

nope. how about before you power down at the end of the day?

 

The only way that would be normal is if you always drive quite awhile in EV mode before you park the car for the night. And it shouldn't take too long for it to recharge when you start up in the morning, especially if your drive is 25 miles. Normal level is about 2 bars from the top and that's pretty much where it stays if you are going over 42 mph during your commute. In the winter when you're using the heater, it's not unusual for mileage to be down in the 30's, especially if you hop in the car and quickly get up to speed before it's had time to warm up.

 

We are all guessing, but I suspect he is looking at an average for the life of the car, not an average of each tank.

If he is on cruise control on level ground he should get 50 MPG at 70.

 

no, the 27mph is for that specific trip of 220 miles that you have in the picture. sorry, the picture doesn't agree with your story, there is something amiss here and that something explains the low mpg figure.

 

I agree we're all guessing, he hasn't answered one of my questions.

However, since his Trip A display shows only 220 miles at 27mph, his fuel gauge shows less than half and his daily commute is 25 miles, it looks to me like he's resetting Trip A to record mileage for individual tanks, but he probably isn't recording the odometer reading between fill-ups to manually compute the actual mileage.

The battery status gives me pause and I think there might be something draining his battery, like the dome light being left on, but I can't tell because he's never said what the status is before he turns the power off. It's not rocket science to look at the display to see what the battery status is and to look at the mileage displayed when you do turn it off to see what the mileage was between power on/off. It also doesn't take a lot to watch the energy usage display to see if the charging system is working properly.

I have a 1 mile stretch before I get to my house where the car uses EV mode. My battery doesn't get depleted and is still full the next time I use the car, which can be as long as a week. When I take my wife to some appointments, it's not unusual for me to sit in the car with the radio and AC on. It takes about 20-30 minutes for the battery to get depleted and the ICE to start up to recharge it. Recharging only takes a short time though, the ICE only runs a minute or so. Living in Phoenix, that's one thing I really like about the Prius, being able to sit with the AC on and not have the engine run the whole time.

 

The Prius teaches you how to drive. How to efficiently accelerate....when to brake....when not to brake, etc.
Can I assume that you are driving this car like a "regular" car? This would explain poor MPG. 70mph highway should yield at least upper 40's if not 50 mpg. I have done several 1000+ miles road trips with mine....where I have the cruise set at 70mph, yielding 50-52 mpg on the trip.
My daily commute is 15.5 miles each way. I am in Colorado, so my commute TO work goes from 5950 ft to about 5300 ft. I frequently get upper 60's to low 80's mpg.
Trip home, mid 50's to low 60's.
Check your car for brake/wheel drag....but a 3 year old car should not have any worn hubs or dragging brakes

 

I too wonder about the low state of charge, think that might be behind the low mpg, if indeed that's what happening.

Still, leaving lights on would only drain the 12 volt, AFAIK.

 

Duh, senior moment.

 

My wife does not like driving my Prius because the way the gas pedal responds is too slow for her taste. Every time she does drive my car though, she kills the mileage for that tank. I honestly don't know how she does it. She does the same on the Suburban too. I think the Prius taught me how to drive more efficiently.

I often times have similar readings like the 27 MPH average speed. Mine is due to the time at stop lights and such getting from the house to the HI way and the traffic on the HI way.

 

Personal opinion is that if she is driving like that, you're probably better off showing her how to use Power mode to make the accelerator behave more like what she's used to. Trouble is once you show her, you can't "un"show her.

 

I don't think you ever said what tires you put on or what tires the previous owner had on. The Prius seems to be affected more that other cars by different wheel/tire combinations, but that mileage still seems awfully low given your temps in the 50's and 60's, though I don't know what they are during your commute or if you have the heater on.

 

same with my wife. she drives so bad, she managed to overheat the HV battery once. my daughter also gets only about 40 MPG. On the other hand my son drives reasonably and gets 50-50MPG, almost as good as I do.

i'm glad you like the car. the common mistake is keeping the pedal too light in a prius. you discharge the HV, wear it too much, and lose MPG. look up pulse&glide driving.

sounds like part of the problem. oversized wheels with non-LRR tires and probably aired too little.

 

foBW,

LRR is Low Rolling Resistance tire, which enhances MPG because they have less rolling resistance.
Don't be discouraged.
If all the basic stuff like spark plugs, air filter, alignment, etc. is good, then you are o.k.

Just enjoy driving the Prius.

stt