Possible Future Owner, Please Help Me Decide

My commute is 10 miles each way per day. And I get stuck in traffic sometimes going 0 to 23 mph.
My average mpg is right around 50 for my lifetime average. I can mostly get over 55 mpg in summer.

There are two catches though in comparing to your needs:

1 in winter cold weather I prewarm with a block heater. Also I add insulation to engine compartement as needed so it gets warm enough when driving slow.

2 I get the traffic jams at night mostly going home. Driving too slow in morning before car is warm could be bad.
Engine won't turn off till it is warmed up.

I'm using us gallons, so if you get 30-32 with your current Renault in imperial gallons, seems like you should see a good improvement.

 

Yes I think it would work for you. As Tom said mileage will be better than the Renault but how much better kind of depends on you and your driving style. The HV battery should have about the same charge on it next morning as when you parked the car. People have left the car parked for a couple of months with no problems.

The SOC (state of charge) on the HV battery isn't much of a factor anyway. Think of the battery as a place to put extra energy so you won't have to throw it away, It would be better not to build up the extra energy to start with but sometimes it can't be helped.

 

The battery does not lose much charge overnight. Do not worry about that.

Good luck.

 

You'd also be able to drive in London without paying the special tax.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(renpriv @ Jul 25 2006, 10:06 AM) [snapback]292029[/snapback]</div>

You might see if you can rent one for a week. I rented one for 2 weeks to test in my normal driving situations. Worked great. It was a little expensive ($600 US), but I thought it was cheaper than buying and finding I didn't like it.

 

...your current car sounds like it des pretty well with fuel eco, and i can undersand your position, because there are instances where the prius doesn't get that good fuel eco in stop and go, especially if your battery is pretty low, the car will start the engine for you to move a meter and then shut down and not charge the batt... its really annoying and puts alot of wear on the engine i think.

But there are 2 sides to every story. there have been times i have been driving downtown areas where the speed limit is only like 25 and its kinda stop go from light to light, and get 80 mpg for 20 minutes and then cruise on the interstate and get 45 mpg...

a prius is a wise investment and i think you'd be happy with one, most people are...

 

I've had my Prius since mid-April - my commute is similar to yours, 5-6 miles and 15-20 minutes. I have about 2700 miles on my car, and am averaging 47-48 miles/gallon, which is a LOT better than I'd get with my old car. I've only taken one 'long' trip, 500 miles round trip, 1 50 mile round trip and perhaps 6 trips that were in the 12 - 14 mile range, so almost ALL of my history is from the commuting.

From other things I've read here, this is typical MPGs for short trips - it takes between 5 and 10 minutes for the car to warm the engine and catalytic converter up, so the consumption screen usually shows between 25 and 35 MPG in the first 5 minute bar, and somewhere between 35 - 55 in the second 5 minute bar, then more like 75 MPG in the third one, and around 50 in the fourth one (since the last bit of my trip is uphill).

Also from what I've read I should probably expect my winter mileage to be in the 38-42 MPG range.

 

Probably the best thing about Prius is that even though it tells you things like the charge level on the hybrid battery and energy flow and MPG in real-time, you don't need to look at that stuff or think about it when you drive. The system is designed to charge the battery if it gets too low, use electric motors when you go slow, kick in some power when you need it, and all without a second though from the driver.

Having the MFD just allows people to obsess over milking every bit of economy from their gasoline ("petrol" for you, he he). Which is a good thing, because some of those same people (i.e. me) would obsess over less productive things, like shaving one minute off their commute at the expense of piss-poor fuel economy.

 

The prius can run on battery but it's a hybrid and not an electric car. To have it stay in pure EV mode you need to be careful when giving gas or the ICE will kick-in. In stop and go traffic it's quite easy to have it gor for EV only for quite some distance but that requires driving slowly and coastin as much as you can.

Oh! and if you run the AC it will over time drain the battery a lot quicker.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(renpriv @ Jul 26 2006, 11:04 AM) [snapback]292663[/snapback]</div>