So whats the general consensus on using prem fuel? Any benefits? Ive always used techron fuel system cleaner every 3-6k miles. Anyone else use this?
NO MORE PREMIUM GAS. That's why I got a Prius. Save your money, regular unleaded recommended by Toyota. They know best.
The chevron is 30min round trip from me lol. But now I wont fill up as much so I might do it now. I may use the concentrate once then start using chevron gas every fill up.
Texaco sells identical gas. The concentrate really is a waste of money if you plan to use the gas. Injector cleaning is no where near being the issue it once was, even less so in a Prius.
There actually is a general consensus. There is NO benefit to using premium fuel in the Prius...AT ALL. The only thing that "premuim" gas improves in this vehicle is the profit margins for the fuel provider. Period. There are exceptions. but this is either an accident in assembly (like a Mazda that I owned a few decases ago) or vehicles that specifically require "Premium Unleaded Fuel Only" like my V-Rod or a Chevy Volt. I actually ran two consecutive tanks of Premium through my Prius when I was in my hypermilier phase...and you know what? Yup. No difference at all...........except about 20 cents a gallon at the pump, which I didn't have to pay for. Yes....but not at your intervals. Not nearly. In a Prius you're talking about every ten tanks, which probably isn't going to hurt your car---the trouble is that you're probably not going to help it much either. You know what's pretty good at cleaning intake components? Yup.... Alcohol. You get 10-percent of that in your fuel already......premium or regular. Some people REALLY love their cars, and they think that if they lavish extra attention on their babys, then they will grow up to be 'successful' over-achievers. The trouble is....we're talking about cars. I'm sorry........but like it or not, spending $0.20 more on a gallon of gas isn't even going to get you the marginal benefit that you'd expect by shopping at Whole Foods versus Kroger's. ...Sorry man.
If you buy TopTier.com gasoline, its supposed to have adequate additives. I just use Regular and I don't add extra addtives.
Recommended fuel for the Prius is "regular unleaded". I don't need to be told twice. That's music to my ears.
Many years ago, we didn't have E10 in our area so I did a series of gasoline tests including premium: three brand gasolines had ~5% more energy than others all premium gasolines had low energy our 2003 Prius would at maximum throttle showed more spark advance ... self-tuned to use higher octane even tuned, the premium did not have the same performance at maximum power as high energy, regular I could not find evidence that high octane gas made sense in our 2003 Prius. But now all gasoline is E10 so the modest energy content of some brands does not make repeating the gasoline tests worth my time. Bob Wilson
Our recommendation for Australian fuel is at least 90 octane or higher.I happily use 98 octane because I have extensive experience in other vehicles that it keeps the engine cleaner and does not foul the injectors. At the equivalent of US 100,000 miles my engine runs like new and my oil is still clear from service to service. PS. we use Research Octane numbers here. The American equivalents are lower numbers, 80 something.
In USA we use AKI (anti knock index) which is (Research Octane + Motor Octane)/2 where regular is 87 AKI and Research Octane is approx. AKI + 4 or 5 so 91 min Research Octane is USA. So we are also >90 (specifically ~91) on the Research Octane.
If the Prius was a 8 cylinder, 4.0 or larger engine then I would say yes get the 90+, other wise cheap gas is fine.
Some volt owners also use regular gas (87 Octane) in their Volts with no problems and little or no difference in MPG's. Last month while in Reno NV I used 85 Octane ( no name gas station with octane stated on the pump) with no problems.
