New Prius owner

Your question has an answer: it depends.

First off, the fuel gage is nonlinear, so pips dropping on the gage isn't a good measure of gallons used or gallons remaining.

Second, there is a bladder in the fuel tank which often will not act as you would expect with any other regular tank. Your assumption may have been correct that there might have been about a gallon of fuel left, however there have been folks who have gotten the blinking fuel low indicator and have traveled many more miles before fueling up, and there are those that get the blinking pip and end up going to electric in a very short period of time after the warning started.

I make it a point to refuel on 1 or 2 pips. I never wait for it to flash. I also do not try to assume how much fuel I have left because it is just too difficult and varies so much, again because of the bladder and the guess gage.

 

Welcome

 

Congradulations LtBird...you are getting good performance. I got mine about 3 weeks ago, I live in Tx and it is SUMMER, hot..lots of AC. My trips are shorter, and more of them..my gas mileage is only slightly better then 40. Going to Houston, and will put about 200 miles on the car so I expect I will see better performance. My son likes muscle cars., but I think down the road he will outgrow that adrenalin. Hey there is nothing worse then running gas out of a fuel injected engine, you know that..fill up at one or two bars or by miles driven which should be 400-450 miles, go for 500 only when the car says it averaged well over 50 (something I hope to see someday!). Congrads
and good luck.

Silver 2005 PCKG "B", nothing fancy..just the basics!!

 

I'd say you have about 1-2 gallons left when it starts blinking. Be careful about judging your distance to empty using the tank average MPG on the display though. You could do superb over most of the tank, and happen to be in an environment providing a much lower MPG when in the blink, which won't easily be reflected by its numbers.

 

I recently read on some board somewhere that the driver went 103 miles until he ran out of gas once the indicator started flashing.