Prius not for "little old ladies"?

That is very inefficient pedaling. My gf only burns about 1 beer/5 miles, I burn a beer every 3. She will drink the same amount as I do to make me not feel bad I wish there were showers at work so I could ride.

bring on the phv. If I'm plugging something in I'd rather it be a battery than a heater. I've thought about ken's hack.

not at all, that pedal doesn't go down very far. My guess is you have a lot more of those long trips to get your average up. Do me a favor. Set a trip odometer up before your commute to work. As long as you don't go far for lunch report back after driving home. Report mpg, average speed, and distance. It should be far less than 50mpg, or your car is much better than mine.

 

When I get in the car after my wife has been doing a ton of short trips (5-10 miles with probably stops in the middle) the mileage will typically finish a tank around 47 or so. Since the Prius is overrated by 2% that's more like 45 real MPG. However, I can raise this average up substantially by just braking earlier and being a bit gentler on the throttle. She pays less attention to that (and it's probably safer not to pay much attention to it).

With some attention to driving habits the real world 51/48 claims of Toyota are fair but we just don't tend to get quite that high (would read on a trip as about 53 city or 50 highway). I have had high 50's real world on a 100+ mile trip on the highway with fairly low speed limits and set on cruise.

We normally have AC on (I did for that trip) so that hurts economy a touch.

 

You may be missing the point.

ALL AUTOS suffer in terms of fuel economy on short trips due to engine warmup time. The Prius, while unique in many ways, is NOT unique in this capacity.

-Brad

 

actually it is unique. It pays a worse percentage penalty on short trips, especially short hilly highway trips than a normal gasoline engine. YMMV and will likely still be higher since that normal engine got worse mileage to begin with. If I compare my mileage on a 3 mile trip to a friend with a fit, I get 3-4 mpg more than the fit, not the 20 you would believe from the sticker. Go over 20 miles and the prius is in its comfort zone.

 

Back to the original question, i commute about 20 miles each way here in Atlanta. About two-thirds surface streets and one-third interstate. I average 55-60 mpg. I've had as high as 73, but I'm still not sure how that happened...

 

Not mine. My Subaru is worse than my Prius on this matter. It seems that the Suby needs a quart just to get warm.

One cannot simply figure mpg difference between short and long trips for this, because the American MPG measure leads the innumerant to faulty conclusions. L/10km or Gal/100mi would be much more illuminating.

 

Sometimes I'll finish up a short trip at 42, sometimes at 58 or 60. Depends on my SOC when I start out, and other factors of course. One thing remains constant, tank after tank...my average speed is 17 mph. I almost never have my Prius on a highway...and when I do, in NYC, speeds rarely exceed 45mph....and often I just creep along.

When I say heavy on the pedals, I'm not just referring to the accelerator. It's how you use that brake that can make or break you.

 

This sounds like a "half-empty" view. It is equally valid to say that the Prius is unique: It gains an unusually good percentage advantage on long trips, where regular cars just keep sucking down the gas.

Tom

 

Commute 1.5 miles each way, wife driving (non-hypermiler). Over 9 months and 13500 miles, 50 mpg average (true). Highway trips a little more, warmed up local a lot more, cold commute year round average probably 45 mpg. I am amazed at the way the 2010 handles short trips. We do not have to get on a freeway in the commute, so it is easy going on the cold ice.

 

Ditto...but with a different wife driving

 

My daily commute is pretty short - just over 5 miles on hilly roads with speed limits of about 35. In the winter I get mid 30's and in the summer it is high 30's.

 

52.6 mpg average here. This morning I just topped off a 9.10 gallon tank after driving 494 miles! That was 54.28 mpg!

 

That is quite funny tom. Take a look at the thread subject. I was responding to that. The fact that you can change the subject and not address the topic does not mean that honestly reporting my experiences are not valid. In fact I would say your observation is quite off topic. On these other topics I have honestly talked about the priuses virtues.

 

Thanks, there does appear to be quite a variation in vehicles. My experiences when clocked are Lexus GS and Honda Fit. These may just be much more efficient at the warm up. The Lexus V8 never seemed to have any penalty but it was built more than 10 years ago so environmental controls may have something to do with it. The fit seems to have a much smaller penalty than the prius. I agree about gal/distance as better measures, and motor trend even has done editorials about how this is a better way to honestly measure efficiency.

 

Here in Munich I have a 18km/11mi commute each way (36km/22mi total). 12 traffic lights (some of them are synchronised), a perennial traffic jam in a road works area of about 1km/0.6mi one way, about 3km/1.8mi the opposite direction, several tunnels, high grade slopes, and 3km/1.8mi highway (I drive the stretch at max 100km/h-62mph). Speed limits from 50-31 to 60km/h-37mph.

With AC on and depending on weather I get anything from 4L/100km-58mpg in Summer to 5L/100km-47mpg in Winter.

I doubt any car can do anything better, even the most efficient diesel - half of the time (about 15 of 30mins) you are not moving - so if you also have no start-stop, I believe you are out of luck.

I would really like to know how much does a BMW320d with Efficient Dynamics, 163HP and declared average fuel consumption of 4,1L/100km-57mpg (as advertised) and 5L/100km-47mpg in town does in reality in town on my commute...
BMW is so presumptuous, they don't even compared it (click on the Facts&Figures tab at the bottom of the page) against the Prius...

BTW: in Germany the 320d Efficient Dynamics Edition with a comparable trim as the Prius here (e.g. Prius Life), costs 37k€ (!!) and this without registration, winter tires, transporation fees. No comment.

 

Okay, I've taken another look at the thread topic. My statement stands as originally posted.

Tom

 

A more efficient warm up, or just less efficient overall? I used to drive a Jeep C-J5 with a small block V8. I couldn't detect any warm up penalty with that beast. The mileage was so bad that it was hard to notice much difference, regardless of speed or temperature. At 15 mpg, a 10% hit is only 1.5 mpg.

Tom

 

I think this is simple physics and math. Regardless of what engine in what car, the amount of heat energy required to bring the engine up to operating temperature wouldn't be drastically different because they're all pretty much same amount of metal to heat up, give or take, I don't know, 50%?

Now that amount of energy as a percentage of a gas gustler's fuel consumption, would be negligable while the somewhat same amount of energy would be a big negative impact on the mpg of a gas sipping Prius.

It's not because of the design of the Prius engine that requires more heat energy to heat it up. It's because the amount of heat energy to heat it up, although not much different from that of other cars, posts a bigger percentage of the total fuel consumption of a Prius. So the Prius' advantage of low fuel consumption became its disadvantage for warming up, relatively speaking, I think.

 

GenIII has exhaust heat recovery, so it should need less fuel to heat up all that metal and coolant than do previous cars.

I suspect that my Suby's H4 configuration gives it more metal and fluid to heat up than a normal inline engine of the same size, leading to my only half facetious comment that it needs a quart of fuel to get warm.