We just passed 400 miles in our new 2010 Prius.

Entirely city driving with A/C on . . .First 450 miles: 32.8 mpg - very conservative driving. Pkg V

 

I am so glad to hear that I am not alone.

I have been reading many posts about people getting 50-60 MPG right away, while I have been seeing fuel economy in the low to mid 30's.

After my third fill up, at 522 miles, my overall fuel economy is 33.9 MPG. (This is calculated using total miles driven divided by total amount of gas added to fuel tank.)

I know the types of trips I take are not very fuel efficient. I drive mostly short trips on suburban streets (i.e. a lot of traffic, constantly slowing down and speeding up, rarely cruising along) with the A/C on (in 100+ degree weather). I have been using Eco Mode most of the time. I am using the Dynamic Radar Cruise Control whenever I am on a road with a speed limit of 45 MPH or more. It is constantly adjusting the speed because of the traffic. When I drive on the interstate or other highways, I see the fuel economy pick up.

On Thursday, I filled up the tank then drove home, mainly on a highway. The computer is now reading around 41 MPG, which is more like what I expected.

My best trip (again, fairly short but at a more constant speed) achieved 50.6 MPG. I was so thrilled I took a picture of the fuel consumption bar graph.

 

489 miles, first tank, 55.4 mpg, all in-town local driving with an average speed on the Trip computer of 21 mph. Nearly all A/C, maybe 30% ECO Mode. Second hybrid (RX 400h usually 28 mpg in these conditions), and I picked up even more techniques from this site.

 

If you aren't getting at least 40 MPG there is something wrong. Even in the coldest temperatures like -10 degrees (on my generation II) I wouldn't expect a tank that low.

#1. DO NOT DRIVE IN EV MODE, OR ON BATTERY POWER AT ALL. EV Mode is only beneficial if you need to start the car to say move it in the driveway or out of the garage. Always think of the Battery as basically being like the Give a Penny / Take a Penny at the gas station except in this case the engine ALWAYS has to pay the battery back. When you are driving the engine tries to run in preferred efficient RPM ranges, if it is producing more energy then is needed to move the car it gives the extra energy to the battery (Give a Penny), that way when it needs a bit more energy then the most efficient RPM range for your speed can provide it can borrow it from the battery (Take a Penny). It is nearly always least efficient to drive in EV mode because the energy is converted from gasoline to charge the battery.
#2. Check your tire pressure, at minimum it should be at the PSI listed on the drivers door panel.
#3. Don't use Premium gasoline. (the US Prius is designed for 87 Octane fuel, higher octane gas actually contains less energy)
#4. Check your oil level, make sure it isn't low or overfilled.
#5. Make sure there isn't anything clogging your Air Filter.
#6. Do not follow the driver in front of you too closely, it causes you to brake more frequently.
#7. and the obviously make sure you are turning the car off when not driving, a good rule of thumb is if you don't plan on driving it again within 5 minutes it is always better to go through the warmup cycle again then letting it run down the traction battery.
#8. Basically drive it like a normal car and you always get at least 50 MPG barring extreme weather conditions.

 

That's a very good benchmark to state.

With my Iconic model, even in the coldest and worst driving conditions, MPG rarely dipped below that. New owners do tend to fight the system, doing exactly the wrong thing by babying it rather than just driving it.

My suggestion is to use the flow of traffic to gauge "normal" driving while in ECO mode. If you still aren't seeing a big bump in MPG after the first 3 or 4 minutes of warmup, go for a joyride in the country. At a constant 55 MPH, the efficiency should climb up to around 60 MPG.
.

 

Hi Ira -

I too am glad I'm not alone, but fortunately I'm around 42 MPG (just based on car's reporting). I can nudge it up to around 45 by being really careful and not letting my wife drive it, LOL! The car hates short trip driving, which is almost all I do, with a 7 minute commute and most stores and restaurants within a similar range. By the time the car is warmed up, I'm already there. 34 seems a tad low, unless you do a lot of jack rabbit starts and stops, and blast the AC. FWIW:

1. In city driving, it is very hard to offset the gas lost in acceleration with the short bursts of steady speed driving. Hence, the best advice seems to be to try to avoid the using the brakes or losing momentum, by anticipating what is coming up.

2. You can also try dialing up the AC temp, since it is clear that the AC also makes a big dent. I find that easy, since the AC is pretty cool and you can point the vents right at yourself (of course, my wife wants lower temps than I do, so not always easy to do).

3. You may already have noticed or read about this, but if you back off and feather the pedal after you get up to speed, you can usually get the car to go into a higher mpg mode, as indicated by the instant mpg indicator. The smart people here recommend not deliberately trying to go into all electric mode (indicated by the instant mpg indicator jumping to 100%), due to conversion of energy losses. On the other hand, in steady speed city driving this is sometimes unavoidable, especially in the 2010.

4. If you are driving down any long, level parkways, like along the river there in Austin, you can try a mild form of pulse and glide, i.e., get up to speed or a little higher, then coast as long as possible to whatever lower speed you are comfortable with, then repeat. However, the true glide requires you to feather the accelerator just enough to keep keep the regeneration function from occurring, which will allow the car to coast further faster, since it eliminates the drag cause by that function. You can sort of tell if you've eliminated the drag just by feel, but the instant mpg dial zooming to 100% and eco bar showing charging occurring can also be good indicators.

5. There seems to be a general consensus that brisk acceleration to get up to speed is best, but not mashing the pedal brisk. The eco bar going into the red zone is a possible indicator of being too brisk, but I find that it is simply unavoidable a lot of the time, so I guess you just have to use common sense here.

6. Some people advocate high tire pressures to reduce rolling resistance. I tried 42/41 but am now running 38/37 for the sake of comfort. Based on my own experience and what I've read over the years, any gains from running higher than 42 are probably marginal at best.

7. The 17 inch wheels have a 2-3 MPG hit, based on Toyota's own testing. I guess we could switch out our wheels to 15 inch, but I value the stability (and looks) too much to give them up.

Hopefully, by writing all this out, I'll prompt the smart people to make more suggestions for our type of driving, and tell me how wrong I am!

 

Now that we have a meter available, it looks like there's a bit of a misunderstanding of how to interpret it brewing.

The "red/power zone", based on my observations, doesn't mean it's something to avoid. Otherwise, all you'd need is just the ECO indicator symbol. The fact that it has a dynamic range displayed helps to show the overall power being consumed, since it's not all coming from an engine RPM increase. Motor contributions are welcome. After all, that's what the hybrid system is for.

Put to a motto: KEEP IT BRIEF

So, it's ok to see red. Just don't over do it. Accelerate at a more-than-modest pace (briskly), then back off quickly. There's no need to baby the system. We can now observe that efficiency does come without any disruption to the normal flow of traffic.
.

 

Remember that the miles driven on the dealer's fillup, before you fill the tank yourself, don't count. You have no real clue whether or not they filled it the same way you do.

Typical trip length on a cold engine also matters. Another thread has someone with a 1 mile commute, which would knock my mileage down into that range. My non-hybrid, which can beat 32 on the highway, would be in single digits for a 1 mile commute.

Beyond that, it takes a while to unlearn old habits and learn how to drive a hybrid. Despite two decades of driving for efficiency, a year of hypermiling, and seven weeks on a hybrid, I'm still in a learning phase. Many other drivers also have to handle more difficult terrain and fit into more difficult traffic imposed by other drivers who don't care about efficiency. While they should be getting much better results than their pre-hybrids, it will take a while to catch up with those of us who have more experience and easier conditions.

 

Hello everyone, New owner Gen III.
I just reached 535 miles on my first tank from the dealership.
Sounds like people are getting a lot let MPG then I thought.
I tried driving the car as I would on any car and averaged 54 MPG's (on the trip monitor) and tried taking it easy as I could at averaged 63 MPG's (on the trip monitor).
I drive just about 100 miles from home, work and back. Mixed city and highway and averaged around 40 to 50 MPH.
I think I am getting pretty good milage either way and am very happy with the car so far.

 

Mid 30's is pretty low. I'm at almost 800 miles on my 2010 and on my first tank I got ~59 mpg (indicated on the display, 56.5 at the pump, but who knows how full the dealer filled it) and I'm showing 60.5 mpg on my second tank (~350 miles). My daily commute is 6.5 miles one way...I go a total of 20 miles 2 days a week. I also have almost 9 years of experience with my 2001 in driving and picking my route. I've taken one highway trip longer than ~20 miles and this caused my mpg to drop.

Some tips worth repeating, especially for short trips:
- make sure your tires are at about 42psi (front) and 40 psi (rear)
- pick a route where you don't stop much during the warmup
- accelerate to speed quickly...such as in the top part of the ECO range, even power range for a few seconds
- once at speed and warmed up, glide (HSI at zero)
- drive in ECO mode
- don't use heat or A/C if possible, especially during initial warmup
- anticipate red lights, brake early if needed so you don't need to stop (but, of course, watch for traffic behind you)
- find a route that has a couple of low traffic road segment (~1/4 - 1/2 miles long) near the end of your drive where you can drive in stealth mode -- OK to let the battery SOC drift lower at end of commute because the next day's warmup will charge it up
- when the battery gets to 2-3 bars (not near your trip end), drive a little faster and more aggressively (but not so you have to brake). This, efficiently, charges up the battery for later stealth/glide driving. The alternative is that the battery gets low and the ICE may come on just to charge the battery.

3PriusMike

 

Just filled my tank for the first time at 427 miles reading. The car took 8.125 gallons, resulting in 52.55 mpg. I drove the car as I usually do, and let the car computer decide what mode it wants to be in. I am quite happy with the mileage, given it is its first fill-up. Hopefully, mileage will improve as the car is broken-in.

 

I've put just short of 2000 miles on my car in the last month and a half, about 70% highway. I'm only averaging about 49 MPG according to the dash readout, I still need to learn how to drive this thing. 1400 of my miles consisted of a road trip through some pretty mountainous terrain, which probably hasn't helped. I would love to see some of those high numbers the rest of you are getting one day! out:

 

I took a short trip into town 8 miles and got 90 mpg on the way back I didnt reset the trip but my average went down to say 56 mpg. So I would say the hills even slight inclines hurt MPG and going down hill helps MPG. I would test your car out on different levels.

 

I have 1600 miles in 2 weeks with a 100 mile commute daily, city and interstate. I go 65-70 with CC and A/C at 74 and no change in tire pressure and ECO mode 100%. I get 52 MPG displayed, about 50 measured. It will take some time, but 50 MPG with normal driving isn't too bad.

It's a great car, I have a IV with NAV and I think maybe I should have gotten a III because I am having some back problems, but I'm working at it.

Rich N.