Am I the only non-US Prius owner here?

Although since several months already on PC, found this thread only today.
Italian living in Germany, precisely Munich, the city of big BMWs, Mercedes, Audis and Porsches. Owning a non-german car here is considered public offence.
Prius 3 owner since Sep. 2009.

 

I'm from France near Versailles,

 

Hello From Italy!

I've actually opened a local Hybrid club.

 

Hi there!
Here in Sweden, latest data by the statistical office shows the Prius ranked #18 in 2008 sales of new cars. In 2009, 2,300 Priuses were sold.

In the low-emission vehicle category (roughly a third of the cars sold in Sweden are "miljöbilar"), the Prius ranks #7. In March 2010, the 6 top-selling private cars in this category are 2 diesel-powered Volvos, an E-85 Renault, a petrol Yaris and a natural gas VW Passat.
(source: scb.se and bilsweden.se)

 

Ou, I never noticed that here is international part in priuschat. Nice…

 

Although American based, PriusChat is open to everybody owning a Prius, and it is a good thing.
I think it also helps our Prius friends from the US to get a different perspective on all things Prius, as well as about prices, regulations, experiences on the roads, dealers, Toyota, etc.
This is the good side of the Internet - I have found out things in here that I would have had no chance to find other ways.
Welcome to PriusChat and all things "finnish" are welcome!

PS: I don't know what type of routes you typically drive, but I find that 5L/100km in winter (the finnish winter!) is not bad at all!

 

Thank you! Germans and Finnish have much common history. I like this forum also. There is not so many Priuses in Finland, and it is fun to hear feelings from same kind of car owners.

5 liters come from same roads what gives 4.3 at summer. Average speed 44 to 45 km/h. It is regular everyday driving average consumption.

In the middle winter (in here) it is not point to have hybrid car, it is consuming same amount of fuel than regular car. But for electric engineer this is only car choice (for now).

 

Mmm.. You might be right, maybe my head is meshed up from friends who always criticize my car choice. They always find car from magazines what have less consumption and is much cheaper. And what they think looks better…

About how I get those 5 liters, my regular driving route goes by “category 1†road, so it’s usually plowed and salted from snow before I driving it. And I pre heat my Prius more than 3 hours with Defas in winter. I hate scraping windshield. And this 5 liters is average, sometimes is hard to tell is driving weather summer or winter. You can’t trust just looking for calendar…

Next winter I am planning to do more precise measurements and start and stop measurements when I am using (and not using) winter tyres.

 

Im from cyprus

 

How you are awake? Is it middle of night over there?

I have to remember next time to pull out that official consumption when people is asking how much car takes..

 

Do you need to park outside in the night? no garage?
If you check my consumption in the signature, you see that the lifetime average is around 5L/100km. I need to park outside, and in the morning when it is -10C or even -5C and need to scrape the windshield from snow/frost, I end up running up the engine with the heater on to speed up a bit the operation, that is 5 mins instead of 10 and frozen hands! that is when I get the worst fuel consumption on my commute (say, around 6-7L/100km).
When you say "3 hours", you mean a "long time", right?

 

Yeah, I don’t have garage, I am so poor. It is very expensive in here to build garage what compliance all regulations.

I really mean 3 hours, these Defa heaters works with electricity (around 10 to 15 Amperes with 230VAC), I have installed one on engine block and one air warmer inside car. I have outside power with plug in and I am using timer to get car heated before morning.

It’s like Webasto or Eber what you have with premium cars, but working with electricity.

You can check it from google “Defa warm up”, I don’t want to place link here, because I think Defas are overpriced for quality, but there is not much competition in this business.

Edit: Ou, I forgot, this 3 hours is needed when outside temperature is under -20 Celsius..

 

Good to see the difference between summer and winter in your sig AkustaVirtaa. I've only just got my Prius, but I'm only getting 5.0 in the New Zealand winter (pretty short 9 km commute at 3 - 10°C, which is much warmer than Finland!). Hopefully it will come down a bit in summer (and also as my P&G technique improves!).

 

Yep, It seems that I can’t use world clock..

greg256, I am still learning new techniques for hypermiling, and my Prius is almost one year old now.

Btw, 4.2 liters per 100km now from summer average consumption (from over 2000km).

 

I bought my Prius in the end September. Last week I scored a new record 4.3l/100km according to MFD. I am pretty happy, because my daily commute is only 11km one way and in the morning I also take the kids to kindgarten meaning that there are basically two cold starts each morning.

You can find my red Prius in the west part of Ring I in Helsinki region, Finland.