Short trips - Pruis vs. Corolla

You don't get the same wear and tear on a Prius engine. It's designed to cycle on and off continuously as needed. I wouldn't worry about it.

Tom

 

It's worth noting that short trips in the Prius can often have poor milage as well; while the engine is taken care of w.r.t. oil and wear, it doesn't get warm enough to be efficient. By using the Prius on the longer commute, you are more likely to get efficient miles out of it than you would on the shorter route.

(My own experience was that a short, 5-minute, hilly commute at 30mph returned only high 30s for mpUSg, while a longer, 30-minute, interstate-hilly commute returned 51mpUSg at 65mph.)

 

I tend to agree with both Tom and Tkil. First, I wouldn't worry about engine wear. But short trips are MPG killers, especially in the cold weather. They hurt fuel economy in any car, but the effect is probably magnified in the Prius. A fully warm Prius engine usually will shut down when your foot comes off the gas pedal. But until then, the engine wants to run to keep warm itself. It likely will run continuously in a 2-mile trip from a cold start (especially with cabin heat running), even when it doesn't need to for propulsion.

A tip for either car, if you're not already doing it: Combine as many of those short trips as possible into one. Then the car is at least semi-warm on the later segments.

 

To add a bit more, while you will see a bigger mileage hit in the Prius with short trips, you mileage will still be better than most any other car. You drop from super mileage to merely great mileage.

Tom