A Couple Of Newbie Questions

No Idea, but if you rent a Prius for a couple of days you will be able to test this.

The tank holds 11 gallons, one of the very few ways to shorten the life of the batteries is to drive after running out of gas, so the gauge starts pleading with you to come to your senses at 9 gallons. (Just get gas when it shows one pip)

This is untrue, all the power in a Prius comes from gasoline. At 30 MPH you may be getting 95 MPG, but you are still burning some gas. The electric range is under one mile. There is an EV mode, but it is useful for moving the car around in a parking lot, not driving.

http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii-2010-prius-fuel-economy/64296-updated-mpg-vs-mph-chart.html
The habit that will do you the most good is drive it like it had no brakes.

 

Depends on how you drive. Some people get higher, some people get lower. If you take a lot of short trips (say less than 5-10 miles), your mileage may be lower. If you race from stoplight to stoplight, you may get lower. If you can drive calmly (and this may mean not keeping up with the car in front of you), accelerating moderately, not driving too fast, etc. you may get higher. It also helps if you're willing to inflate your tires to the sidewall maximum, or block the grill. (Sure, LA's not as cold as Canada or other places that grill blocking is very popular, but grill blocking helps even when it's 50s and 60s for me.)

I typically fill up with about 9.5 gallons. That's after the last pip starts flashing and you get a warning beep, though I drive for a few tens of miles first, usually. The manual says the tank is 11.9 gallons. Some people try to get closer to the tank's limits, but most of us realize that it's probably better (for both our mental health and the car) to fuel up when it's convenient rather than risk running the tank dry.

No, that's not really true. The car CAN run in EV mode up to 25 mph (if it's fully warmed up and many other conditions are met), and it CAN go all the way to 46 mph under only electric power (though not in EV mode). However, since all energy in the Prius has to come from the engine, it's usually better to use the gasoline engine to get you moving, and use electric power as little as possible. Typical driving would have you at probably 5-8 mph before the gas engine kicks in, as it takes a bit for the engine to start. In bumper to bumper traffic, the engine will be off if you're just creeping, until the battery is drained. At that point, the engine will cycle on and off (regardless if you're moving or not) to keep the battery marginally charged. It's not good for your mileage (eg it will probably be less than 50 mpg), but it far exceeds what you'll get in those conditions compared to a car that is idling the whole way.

I'd expect you to be in maybe the high 40's at that speed. 65 mph or so will get you to the low 50 mpg range, 55 mph would get you mid or high 50's. Give or take, of course; it depends a lot on terrain, driving style, temperature, tire pressure, and the chinese zodiac.

You can also try changing your driving habits over the last 3 months with your current car. It'll help quite a bit there as well! My brother got probably a 50% improvement on his Volvo's fuel economy when he realized that he didn't need to floor it at every light, or be the fastest one on the road, or get pushed back into his seat from the acceleration.

 

There are four driving modes Normal, EV, ECO, Power. I will try to quickly explain each, might be better to search driving modes. First Normal it is just what it says normal it is the absence of the other three modes.
Second EV is the most restrictive mode. It propells the car only by battery power via the electric motor MG2 no ICE operation. It has speed, distance, and battery charge/temperature criteria that govern it's usage. The ICE will come on engage if you exceed any of the restrictions for EV mode usage. Third ECO mode it does a few things for you it changes the way the climate controls operate and decreases accelerator pedal sensitivity, responsiveness in order to provide for maximum fuel economy. Fourth and lastly Power mode is like the opposite of ECO mode but it is a couple of steps above Normal mode. It will make your Prius get up and go, should be used for overtaking, on ramps, merging, hill climbing and the such where more on demand power and acceleration is required. It also increases accelerator pedal sensitivity and responsiveness. Only Normal and ECO modes can be default settings upon power up, EV and Power have to be selected each time and will not be retained after shutdown. There was a thread last week advocating for Power mode to be a default setting. Hope that helps.

 

EV = Electric only.
ECO = Economy mode. Throttle is less responsive. Burns less gas. Feels like the power curve is flattened to sort of encourage drivers to not stomp on the gas.
Power = Throttle and engine is more responsive. Burns more gas.

As the salesdroid told me, there's "Prius mode" which I guess is sort of the middle ground when you don't have any of these three modes active.

I've only had my Prius for a day, but you can definitely tell the difference between Power and ECO mode. I was cruising around in Eco mode, watching the energy display and hit a red light at the bottom of a hill that leads on to the beltway here, so I put it in Power mode. The car felt completely different. Throttle was very responsive, accelerated very quickly. After tooling around in ECO all day, Power mode almost felt like a race car.

 

Here is my commute:
Orange county to Los Angeles: 50 miles each way
I get 50 to 55 mpg's on my 15 inch factory's.
I get 45-48 mpg's on my 18 inch aftermarket wheels.

I only drive on normal mode.

I drive myself and only have a 10 inch box and amp. I would suspect you will get the same amount. Good luck.

 

You might not want to purchase a Prius, solely because of the price. You might get better "value" if you buy something like a Honda Fit at about $14K and 30MPG. However, you are paying USC tuition, so you must have some money tucked away under your mattress, so I'll assume that ain't a problem.

This winter, I'm getting about 45-47 MPG. It's been real cold in Los Angeles (yes, it's been much colder everywhere else). It should start warming up in a month (maybe less), so I will be getting better MPG when that happens.

Your trip down Fig can be a real pain. That's "city" driving, and your MPG can go up, but it can also be much more stop than go, so your MPG can suffer. And, as you know, we like to jump on the accelerator when the light turns green, which isn't a good thing for MPG.

I'm guessing that you take the 110 freeway around 3rd Street, downtown. So, you are on Fig for quite some time. But the 70 to 80 MPH on the 110 can be a killer (then to the 5 then the 2?). On my trip to Las Vegas over Christmas (and it was cold), driving about 70 all the way, I was getting about 45MPH. So, assuming you are driving 1/2 on the freeway and 1/2 on Fig, you should get somewhere around 47-48 MPG during the winter. If you slow down on the freeway, you might be able to do better. You should also get a little above 50MPG during the summer.

If you decide to purchase a Prius, come back to these boards and learn a little bit about how to get better gas milage, especially how to change your driving habits.

Mike

 

One thing to consider is learning how pulse and glide works. I've found that stop and go freeway traffic can boost my MPG to crazy levels if you practice brisk acceleration then gliding to a stop. This works well when traffic is doing the typical stop, accelerate to 15-20mph or so then stops again. In the dreaded creeping traffic where you move constantly at 5mph you are screwed. lol