New user introduction

Well Tony went and took all the easy answers...

Welcome to the club. And I will repeat one of Tony's brilliant answers: Don't sweat the mileage right now. Just drive the car, and enjoy whatever you get out of it. You'll figure out several things with time - one week is not enough time to figure out what your mileage really is.

The green part of the battery indicator is sort of reserved for capturing lots of regen when going down a big hill. In normal use, you don't see the green bars, so that's normal. If the car kept the battery at green bars all the time, where would you stuff extra regen when you were able to capture it.

And in closing, I'd like to mention that Tony rocks. :cheer2:

 

I was the same way in the weeks after we got our first Prius. I was actually disappointed that I wasn't getting 55 to 60 mpg - heck, I wasn't even gettng 48 mpg. Then one day a buddy and I went to a distant golf course and, due to highway construciton, he routed me through some 50 - 55 mph side roads. I got 55.4 mpg and was beside myself. What the guys say is totally correct - just drive it and the magic will happen after a while.

The blue bars in the battery are the Prius's "happy zone" and it tries to stay there as much as possible to ensure a long battery life. The green zone is just headroom for those times when extra free energy can be captured without loss of momentum. It's best to just not think about the battery charge so much. It does a great job of taking care of itself.

Enjoy the ride and welcome to PC!

 

There is a very deep well of information and opinon as to how to maximize your mileage when operating a Prius. Off the top of my head a thread called "You will not get 50mpg if" comes to mind.

It kind of all depends on how involved and active you want to be. Unfortunately I have some issue with the premise "just drive it". I myself have heard that information and opinion. It's valid. You can just drive The Prius and the Hybrid Synergy Drive and the computer will give you far better gas mileage than a conventional automobile. But if you want more? Or aren't happy with your gas mileage results then investigating and applying some techniques will be in your best interest and can make a difference. But again, I think it all comes down to how involved YOU want to become.

If it keeps trending down you might have a problem. So do what you are doing, check out Prius Chat for information...it's in here...and stay attentive to what is going on with your automobile and also ask yourself what mileage you would be happy with and how much or many of the techniques and modifications you want to apply in your driving life? The answer to that is different for everyone.

If you ask you are going to get TONS of advice from tire inflation to hypermiling techniques that range from relatively mild to imo sometimes frightening.

I don't mean to be cold I'd myself give you some opinions as to how to improve your mileage, but others have already done that so much better than I could hope to do, I'm just leaving it for others to reply in this thread and/or for you to discover within this forum.

But in a nutshell, keep an eye on that downward trend, Just Drive It, if you want, or investigate some techniques. Bottom line continue to enjoy.

Good Luck, and watch that trend. Outside of weather change, it being colder, the mileage shouldn't continue to trend downward forever or too drastically. Determining that there is nothing going on outside of the norm, is an important first step.