Difference in Distance to Empty and actual miles driven

Distance to empty, is not a consistent measurement in relationship to the miles you've driven.

A hybrid use a gasoline engine, electric motors and a battery all in "synergy" to create the great gas mileage.

But how far you can go on X amount of gas can really change and vary depending numerous variables. How much electric driving you can do (gas not burning), how cold it is outside, engine burns more gasoline warming up, Uphill driving, flat, downhill, short trips vs. highway...

So anyway, Distance to Empty becomes an ever changing estimate.

I don't really pay much attention at all to cruising range, or distance to empty until I get down to the last pip on the gas gauge.
But I've seen it work both ways. In other words, I've seen it say I had 20 miles left, and then I've driven farther than 20, and it still shows I have miles left to go...and I've seen it drop faster in relationship to how far I've actually driven.

I use distance to empty as simply a tool to determine when I should actually fill up. On my Prius reaching Zero is conservative, and I still have nearly always a gallon or more of gas left, but I use Distance to Empty as a "nice" point to actually fill up.

It has never been an "Iron Clad" representation of actual miles to emtpy, nor an accurate measure of how miles I've actually driven vs. what it says I have left. I don't think this is a flaw or problem.

As long as your odometer is reading accurately, and your gas gauge is reading accurately, DTE and Cruising Range, are just estimates. I think you are fine.

 

congrats and welcome! all the best.








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the closer you get to zero, the more accurate it becomes. watch your gas gauge, when you get down to 2 bars, fill up. thats about 6 gallons. if you like taking risks, you can go down until the last bar starts flashing. thats about 8 gallons. then there's still 2 gallons emergency.

 

Maybe analogous to file downloading? The estimated time to download is always shifting, depending on current download speed. Maybe think of it like that?

Personally I pay no attention to that info, just keep an eye on the gas gauge.

 

As said above, don't worry it's only an estimate
With the plug-in, i have seen distance to empty estimate going up even. After several trips all in EV it can update upward.

 

if you drive about the same all the time, it gets really accurate.

 

Mine has always been way off as well as the EV mileage estimate. The most interesting thing I've noticed is this....... If I drive conservatively the Average fuel economy is relatively accurate. If I drive aggressively the Average fuel economy shown only drops a few miles per gallon. It's completely inaccurate. It's almost like Toyota has built in some manipulation of the fuel economy info....... Manufacturers would never cheat like that.......
Just ask Volswagen.

 

This is not cheating, it is far from it.
The estimate tries to predict EV distance of your next trip based on history with more weight to recent history. This is the best estimate the system can give.
Don't expect the system to predict the aggressiveness of your next drive, it is not a prophet.

 

I see an overall positive 7.5% positive bias in what Toyota tells me for mpg, compared to calculated. Variation as low as 5%, as high as 9%.

 

Welcome MPK2015 ,that's good info. on the fuel left thanks Bisco