Gas is burned by fools like me . . .

When I first got the Prius, I would do the same thing with my wife's Honda Accord. The Honda pedal is much more responsive at the beginning than the Prius. I would catch myself reverting to my old driving habits !

But over time, I can tell that I am slowly changing my driving habits to be more like the Prius.

 

Nah you are not a fool. You just want to feel like you are driving a normal car again and want to have some fun and not worry about gas or petrol.

I did the same thing but worse. I borrowed my brothers car and I was driving over 90mph and it felt good.

When I had the Acura RL I drive over 90mph all the time but now I drive like a snail around 70mph.

I think what really suit me is the Lexus 450H. I was so close on getting that one. I guess I will buy that after the Prius because I don't think I can live with the Prius forever. Who knows in 7-10 years time (the period which I plan to own the car) there will be other cars out there. I saw on Discovery today on How they do it and they were showing a sports hybrid plug in that does 100mpg but with amazing acceration with power and torque and only $85,000!

Can't remember the name of that car.

 

my other vehicle is a dodge dakota. 18-20 mpg. 2005, i have put 18,000 miles on it in over 5 years. i use it for hauling, moving, construction, landscaping and loaning to friends. when i drive it, i never think about mileage. i'm generaly careful, but i don't feel like i can have any real effect on savings. although, i could probably drive the mileage down a bit further.

 

I believe the situation is caused by lack of feedback. Plug in a ScanGauge on "the other car" and look at GPH & MPG. I suspect it won't be long before you are driving it like a Prius.

 

I just thrash my Prius from time to time, we both love it.

 

i don't think i could bear to ruin a tankfull.

 

Non-hybrid cars do not reward you to drive properly as much as Prius. Since there is not much incentive, you might as well trash it.

 

I do this too some times, usually on weekends around town. I think you are right in that the car loves to "get up and go" as much as I do.

 

I saw that special too...I think you are referring to the Tesla

 

I drive much faster in the Prius than any other cars I own because I can get away with it in this car, no one ever thinks a dorky Prius can fly down the highway.

 

I concede it is my age .... but my driving habits have changed ... for the better ..... over the years. Expressions like ... "normal cars" or "have some fun" or "trash my car" are foreign terms to me ... but in truth, have always been. Plus, my finance situation prohibits me from "not caring about the price of gas."

I have been fortunate enought to have owned a Sunbeam Alpine ... with the top down, I will admit, I had fun driving that car. I owned a Mazda RX-7 ... I never "trashed" the RX-7 around. I sold an Acura RSX when I bought my Prius. Great car, but I drove it as economical as possible. Only occassionally did I permit it to rev-up to 7000 rpm.

I have found nothing about the Prius that prevents me from having fun driving. In fact, I like to drive it, and when I drive in the mountains, which I do often, I find I can easily "stay with the flow." In many instances, I can exceed "the flow," except I am burning a lot less gasoline.

I am not interested in an EV, because it does not fit my needs, but I think it will be interesting to read drivers experiences once they have them on the road. I suspect battery depletion of an EV will become excessive when "having fun," and "trashing them around."

 

This makes sense:

• Prius - rewards good driving with ~50-60% of the mileage of a gas car. May take a few extra minutes but it is comfortable and quiet.
• Gas car - whacks the owner unless constrained driving techniques are followed. Might as well get it over with as soon as possible.

My testing indicates our Prius gets between 22-25 MPG at ~100 mph. The problem is finding opportunities to cruise at 100 mph for extended periods of time.

Bob Wilson

 

Nope, you're not an idiot, just human. Like Jim above said, it's the feedback. 'Normal' cars only let you know the consequences of your behavior when you gas up. OTOH, on the occasion that I ignore the feedback and just drive it, the numbers are stilll pretty close. Go figure.
~T

 

I agree with this assessment. If every car had a highly
visible, instantaneous mpg meter, people would drive
differently. My prior (non-hybrid) Ford Fusion included
such a meter, and I was always trying to get as high
as I could. It became sort of a fun game.

This is also what they teach you in Quality Training.
You can only improve quality (=high mileage in this
case) if you have a metric that measures the effect
of the changes you make. Alternatively, the first
indicator of a bad or "un-improvable" process is
that there is no tool to give feedback.

 

I also agree with the high visibility mpg meter. This needs to be on continous display to be really useful. A lot of cars have the mpg readout but it normally takes pressing a button several times and scrolling through other values to find it. If it was on the dash display full time I too believe people would drive differently.

It sure works for me on the Prius.

 

I think I do just the opposite. Of course I only have one vehicle. But I have conciously applied some limited hypermiling techniques learned from this site, to my driving of my ICE Honda Fit and have found I can signficantly improve my mileage. Not to hybrid Prius levels...but compared to standard ICE vehicles I can add several MPG's to my average. This is just by smoother, slower acceleration, some pulse and glide like attempts and just being more concious of using momentum more efficiently. Things I did not really do before learning about Hybrids and Hypermiling.

Maybe it's age, but I find the style of hypermiling and focusing more on efficient driving is actually more relaxing and rewarding. It also is probably better for the vehicle.

I used to get speeding tickets....and occasionally I throw it all out the window and like to punch it....but I've found it interesting that what we "enjoy" is so tied to what we are taught to appreciate. I now appreciate efficiency and slower smooth accelaration much in the same manner I used to enjoy tight curves and being the first strained overheated vehicle to the next stop light.

I like a vehicle that is capable of both. Good Efficiency and also not the slowest vehicle on the road.

 

yes u r, but fear not, u are not alone by a longshot.

the Prius design helps to alleviate the massive waste of the internal combustion engine. by altering your driving patterns just a little bit, you can easily see measurable improvement over the stated mileage.

the same thing is true with your Subaru, but due to the fact that its not optimised for efficiency, everything change u make in your driving habit on the Subaru will result in DOUBLE the improvement.

you dont have to get less than half the mileage in your Subaru than you do in your Prius. ask Wayne Gerdes... have him explain to u why he gets better mileage in his larger, non-hybrid Camry than most of his here get in our Priuses!!

 

I've always tried to get good gas mileage, no matter what I drive. Now I have a scangauge, so I can move that from car to car and get immediate feedback as I drive.

If you go over to CleanMPG.com, you'll find people that use hypermiling techniques on pretty much every car or truck in the book. If you increase your mileage by 5 mpg in a car that normally gets 20 mpg, that's a lot more savings than even a boost of 10 mpg in the Prius. And those numbers are doable, depending on your commute and the changes you're willing to make.