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Longer highway trip (up/down the Swiss alps)

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Fuel Economy' started by robby3, Apr 11, 2011.

  1. robby3

    robby3 Member

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    Location:
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    Last weekend I went to the italian part of Switzerland together with my wife and the rear comparment full of luggage. The trip was a total of 540km from 339m/over sealevel, up to 1140m (Tunnel St.Gotthard), down to 196m, driving around the town for dinner on two evenings and back teh whole trip. We had no traffic or any other inconveniences on the roads :)

    The trip was 90% highway with speeds up to 130km/h. A/C was always on as outside temp was between 25° - 31°C (extremely high for April). The display shows 4.4l/100km (53.46 MPG) and I had not yet to fill it up. I have increased the air presure by 0.1-0.2 bar in the tires what felt really good on our (good to very good quality)roads.

    Overall the car was very nice to drive and MPG is really good. We felt the engine sounded somewhat "punished" when we drove the long highway up the alps. With the cruise control engaged at 125km/h the display always sat in the PWR area for a long time. The average consumption rose up to 4.8L/100km (49mpg) when we reached the top level of your journey. We had to increase the stereos volume as the noise of the engine at the contignous high rpm was not that nice (close to annoying).

    The way down the hill caused to shut off the ICE many times what resulted in a best of 4.2l/100km (56mpg) when we arrived the border to Italy. Back to the north we had to travel more uphill what again let the mpg fall. But the final 4.4l/100km are better than expected!

    Greetings from sunny Switzerland
    Roger
     
    #1 robby3, Apr 11, 2011
  2. pakitt

    pakitt Senior Member

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    Wow! you did way better than what I get when I drive from Munich to Florence (via Brenner pass).
    In January from Florence to Munich with 3 passengers and full loaded with luggage, I got 5.8L/100km (displayed).
    Going to Florence in December I got 5.4L/100km.
    It appears that low temperatures, winter tires and adverse weather affect heavily fuel consumption, more than A/C always on.

    What wheels do you had mounted during this trip? the 17" alloy that come standard?
     
    #2 pakitt, Apr 11, 2011
  3. alfon

    alfon Senior Member

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    What type of gasoline are you using?

    Is it regular grade with no Ethanol added?

    Al
     
    #3 alfon, Apr 11, 2011
  4. pakitt

    pakitt Senior Member

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    alfon - if you are asking me - we have E10 since 01.02.2011 in Germany. E5 is priced higher because they claim it is too expensive for them to keep to lines of fuel (even if likely one has 4.9% and the other 5.1%....).
    The numbers above are all *before* using E10. I have done so far only 2 tanks full of E10 and cannot really notice any difference, also because temps have gone up and the FE is going up as well accordingly - so any E10 "side effect" cannot really be seen - i will have to wait a full year and even then, likely the car will have a full break in (now at 24.000km) and will offset the extra fuel consumption, if any, of the E10.
     
    #4 pakitt, Apr 11, 2011
  5. alfon

    alfon Senior Member

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    What is the price you are paying now for
    regular grade gasoline?

    Here in the state of Oregon, U.S.A.,
    I just paid $3.80, U.S. dollar, reg grade per gallon, which is about
    3.8 liters or so.

    Al
     
    #5 alfon, Apr 12, 2011
  6. pakitt

    pakitt Senior Member

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    The cheapest price today in Munich, Germany is 1.509€/Liter.
    If you are not careful, you end up paying up to 1.59€/Liter today.
    The price changes daily. Luckily there are internet tools that point you to the cheapest gas station in the area (like Benzin Diesel Kraftstoff). They are very often reliable.

    In many parts of Italy, due to different taxation, the price of regular grade fuel is already above 1.6€/Liter in most southern regions and close to that, elsewhere in the country.
     
    #6 pakitt, Apr 12, 2011
  7. alfon

    alfon Senior Member

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    Lets see it takes $1.44(US) to buy one Euro.

    Looks like your gas prices are close to $9.00 per
    gallon.

    There must be a lot of tax on your fuel.

    World price I believe is $3.16 U.S. per U.S. Gallon
    before tax.

    al
     
    #7 alfon, Apr 12, 2011
  8. pakitt

    pakitt Senior Member

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    For each liter, 0.78€ are fixed tax (as of today). On top of that there is a variable tax (including 19% VAT!) so that for example 1.4€/L has 0.88213€/L taxes, or about 60% of fuel price, is tax.
    (source Wikipedia)
     
    #8 pakitt, Apr 13, 2011
  9. SWprius08

    SWprius08 SoCalprius

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    $ 4.25 per gallon here in South California
     
    #9 SWprius08, Apr 13, 2011
  10. wstanton

    wstanton Junior Member

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    You give me good memories of driving a rented Prius from Innsbruck up via Oberalppass and down to Andermatt, then north through Luzern ... we would've taken the Furkapass but it snowed. I have no idea about our fuel economy on that trip: it was far better than we expected, because the Prius was a better car than we had paid for.
     
    #10 wstanton, Apr 13, 2011
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