New Prius C owners please post

I got horrible gas mileage today, a 20 point drop. It is raining and 38 degrees out. 42 for my trip of 18 miles. It is usually 55+ (62 or so average) on a warm day (60 degrees or better). Can't wait for the warmer part of spring and summer.

 

I guess I could learn to live with it...

 

Happy new owner; 70.5mpg over 12miles!

 

I did 70 mph + on the highway for 300 + miles. I achieved 52mpg. The weather was 70 degrees.

 

First tank of gas on my 2013 Prius C II:
-Averaged 62 mpg (approximately half highway / half city driving, ECO mode on all the time, practiced pulse and glide style driving to run on electric motor as often as possible, cool outdoor temperatures averaging ~50 degrees F, drove at 62-65 mph on the highway drives). I'm expecting my typical commute to and from work to average 70 mpg! Also, my calculated mpg and reported mpg were similar (although I had reset it at some point).

 

Thats awesome! I average that (62mpg) now normally....but with no ECO.

 

Make sure and still study up. Using the electric motor when it's not most ideal to actually hurts your fuel economy as well.

 

my average so far is 51 since day 1 so around 500 miles on the odo. not bad considering its been fairly cold recently. or at least i think its not bad.

 

Could you explain or point me to a thread where this is discussed? I'm guessing it is better to not use it while climbing hills. Is this what you're talking about?

 

Think about it in terms of this:
The electrical energy in the battery...where does it ultimately come from? You are correct if you said you must burn gas to make that energy. But that conversion process from taking energy from a liquid, then burning it and going through the myriad of channels to go through a stored electrical energy isn't near as efficient as most people think it is.
So, you really don't want to use either form of energy. This is where the pulse and glide comes in. (watch this vid on how to pulse and glide: Max MPG Driving Techniques Youtube Video | PriusChat it's an older prius but the concept and how you do it is the exact same)
Now obviously there are times where using the electric motor is still the most efficient where pulse and gliding is not possible. About 20 mph and under is a good rule of thumb.
Hope this answers some questions. Feel free to direct message me if you want to.

 

Thanks! Looks like I've been doing everything as shown in the video properly. Most of it is fairly intuitive, or at least I figured it out pretty quickly. I could still inflate my tires and use the heat controls a bit differently so I might be able to do better.

 

Great! All that other stuff really helps but the pulse and glide is the bread and butter of hypermiling.

 

The beauty of having that display in l/100km.

99.9 mpg = 2.4 l/100km. I've seen it go lower on the drive back from my brother's place in the mountains.

 

jealous of these numbers! My daily commute is too short of a trip in traffic that loves to accelerate and then brake heavily between stoplights literally every 50 meters. I can never do better mpg than low 40's, even in warmer weather

That said I had a nice 40km drive on the weekend and I got over 60mpg equivalent.

 

Don't feel like you are forced to drive like they do. In fact, even if they don't like it, you will probably be saving a few other people money too if you drive like you know you are supposed to.

 

and even at worse if it is really every 50 meters, you will get there less than 5 seconds later.

 

The main change I made after realizing that "more EV != better mpg" was avoiding the upper half-ish of the EV zone. I accelerate more quickly (3/4 or more of the zone before power) and try to stay no higher than 2/3 up the EV zone, since that drains the battery much more quickly for not much more acceleration.

I think the EV usage also depends on the weather, since in cold areas the motor will run for at least a minute anyway, and if it's running it might as well be charging the battery. That part's debatable though, since as long as you're easy on the pedal much of your initial acceleration is from the battery while the gas engine hums along at its preferred idling/charging speed. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that.

 

Is this what everyone else is finding? I have been averaging above 70 mpg on my 20 mile commute (1/2 highway, 1/2 backroads, low to mid 60 mpg's in the morning, high 70 to low 80 mpg's in the evening) by staying in EV as often as possible (mpg confirmed by gas fill up as well). I climb up small hills in EV, and completely accelerate from a stop in EV and then stay in EV whenever possible. I use the upper half of the EV zone all the time. I even got my best ever commute last week of 87 mpg over 20 miles. When the battery gets low to kick in the ICE for charging, I just keep going slow as usual and let it charge a couple battery bars, then get back in EV for another 3 miles or so. I find when I use the ICE more, my mpg's are lower. I just do slow acceleration, slow deceleration, go the speed limit... and as long as there is no one behind me, I will even stay in EV up a steep hill (dropping from 30 mph to 15 mph for example), then coast down the other side of the hill staying in EV, to keep the ICE from kicking in. I'm not driving downhill a lot either. My commute is only a 100 ft elevation change.

I've noticed that it hardly takes any time for the ICE to charge the battery from 2 to 4 bars when it needs to... so here's what I have found by driving two different ways, same route:
#1. When I use the ICE to get up to speed (nice and easy, not in power level at all) the ICE will be on for 10 seconds each time for a total of 10 times. This is with the engine actually using some power (not an idle, you can hear it clearly). Then get in EV when up to speed.
#2. When using EV as often as possible up to it's max to climb hills, initial acceleration, etc... the battery will run down to 2 bars and the ICE kicks in to charge the battery for about 30 seconds up to 3 or 4 bars. I keep driving normally in the EV zone (although it doesn't display EV during the battery charge) and the ICE is clearly idling and not using a ton of power like it was in #1.

This tells me it is more efficient to stay in EV more often and turn the ICE on and off during driving less often. So I think one long battery charge from the ICE at a low idle is better than many small uses of the ICE at what is usually more than an idle. Of course there is some energy transfer loss to charge the batteries with the ICE as some have said, but the difference is an idle to charge the battery vs. more than an idle to use the ICE to actually drive (you can hear the difference). And I can see the difference with my displayed mpg and after calculating at the pump. Maybe the newer Prius models are finer tuned to use the battery more often and the old driving styles are now less efficient?

 

I have been driving a 2012 C for a little over 2 months now...about 3500 miles. I am in a cold climate and to date my mileage on my trip B gauge is 54.2 mpg. I have also checked my computer with filling my fuel tank right up to the top on several occasions and the computer is about 2 mpg's generous. I am quite happy with this car and I am pleased that I have found this forum...the members here are loaded with helpful comments.

 

First fill-up on my new 2013 Prius C

My odometer read 375.2 miles on that tank, and the display says 50.9 mpg (lots of highway driving) which computes to 7.371 gallons I should be putting my tank

I put 7.773 gallons in, which equates to 48.26 actual mpg. I only have the one data point, and it's pretty close, but the computer is a touch optimistic here.

But it's still pretty nice