New Prius in the mountains

Welcome to PC and congratulations on your upgrade to the Prius. Keep us posted on your mpg accomplishments in the mountains.

I just got back from a trip to the Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. The Prius was well represented in the mountain areas. I was really surprised at how many I saw, a good mix of Gen II and III. So, not only do they have the lowest emissions but apparently they perform very well in the mountains, as you indicate.

 

Did it do that when the HCH was new? I didn't know IMA would draw that much power from the battery.

 

Prius tires are next gen LRR tires. The OEM tires are pretty good with basically no compromise especially in wet surface.

 

:welcome:

Glad to have you here.

 

Yes, from the posts around here. The odometer shows higher speed than actual (I think by law) so the MPG will come out higher than the actual too.

 

:welcome:

Glad to see you here. You'll learn a LOT about your Prius by reading on Prius Chat.

:cheer2:

 

You traded just in time. It looks like the Civic battery has a nasty deficiency:
Civic hybrids: Honda's fix for dying batteries may reduce mpg, acceleration - latimes.com

 

I took our 08 to Colorado last summer from eastern Kansas. It handled the grades from Denver to Lyons and all around without any problems.

 

Agreed, Honda is an excellent manufacturer. My GF's conventional Civic is a great small car; if there had been no Prius I probably would have bought one.

 

Congrats!!!

 

You are mixing gauges.

Speedometer shows speed, and reads high for legal reasons.

Odometer show distance, and does not have that speedometer bias, especially after the class action odometer-bias lawsuit against Honda. Mine read very slightly low last year, I haven't rechecked this year.

GenIII MPG reads high for other unknown reasons. It needn't be that way, as many GenIIs and other car models have demonstrated.

 

This is the first time I've heard of the speedo reading high--but does explain why the print out on the reader board things indicating your speed read a little lower than what I thought I was going. How much low are they? I've slowed down with th Prius--and may be going slower than I think! How do you check your odometer accuracy, fuzzy1?

 

I use highway mileposts over long distances, with numerous samples and crosschecks to detect and discard the misplaced posts and 'busted' sections caused by road realignments.

While I distrust GPS trip tallies due to numerous measurement artifacts displayed on my hiking units, many other readers here do trust them.

 

I posted about an article that Car and Driver did on speedo and odo accuracy at http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...oting/28808-odometer-accuracy.html#post368671.

Article itself is at Speedometer Scandal! - Feature - Auto Reviews - Car and Driver a useful PDF at http://www.caranddriver.com/var/ezf...lication/1e1b33f85f31df61e4830f32f82a5a71.pdf.

 

Having worked with GPS receivers, they are perfectly accurate in a vehicle environment. The only caveat is the refresh rate, which is 1Hz usually. However they make 10Hz units with only civilian channels too.

I generally check my speed on long trips with GPS. I find when you get to the higher speeds, the actual speed varies more greatly. For interstate driving, 82-83 is 80 (units of mph).

 

My GPS concern is with the trip odometer functions, not the speedo. With the later it is much easier to detect and mentally filter out bad readings.

I should have saved a particularly bad example from a long-ago trip on Highway 20 through North Cascades National Park, with a Garmin III. Between terrain obstructions, overhead forest canopy, a poor constellation, and possibly multipath interference, the breadcrumb route was awful with many large lateral deviations from the actual road. One jump was nearly a mile off the road, many others exceeded a quarter mile. A trip distance along the displayed zigzag path was clearly much longer than the actual path of the car.

A newer 60CSx does better with the canopy, but can't fix the other impairments. I barely used its trip odometer, but saw several online complaints about its odo accuracy.

My latest GPS is an automotive unit, which does an excellent job concealing these off-road jumps. But while acting as navigator this weekend, with far more time to watch it than a driver can possibly afford, I caught it snapping to the wrong intersection several times.

Unfortunately I missed an opportunity to re-record the North Cascades highway, and compare all three units with the mechanical trip meter, earlier this month.