I found this website while doing research during our car search - and now I've joined, since my wife and I just bought an '05 prius. We're replacing an '01 Camry that used to get 30mpg easy, but some a**hole rammed it while it was parked in front of our house two weeks ago, and totaled it. We didn't have a lot of time to wait for the perfect car to come along, but we decided pretty quickly that a Prius was the best replacement. We settled for an '05 (white with tan interior - just like our old Camry) with 92k miles. Was a Massachusets car, a smoker's car (ugh!) with cig burns, and a new stereo head unit (left a hole in the dash! why???). But, it was a decent deal, so I can't complain. We've driven it 100+ miles over the last few days and our average (dealer reset just before we test drove, darn him) is 49.5 mpg. This is going to be my wife's daily driver, so I won't get to geek out as much as I otherwise would, but hopefully she'll let me try to hypermile from time to time.
Welcome from about 100 miles to your south. I go through the DC area on business 3 or 4 times a year. I'll give you a wave. :rockon:
Congrats on your Prius and welcome to PriusChat. Maybe your wife will let you drive on weekends although I don't let my wife drive the new Prius anytime. She drives her 2004 Ford Focus...ouch!
I've been gifted the use of the Prius this week! I'm very impressed. We just put in the 2nd tank of gas - the MFD read 52.3 mpg, but I calculated only 49.1 mpg! The first tank we didn't do a manual calculation. It was cold when I was filling the tank though, so maybe the bladder didn't hold as much as it otherwise would have. Also, my commute is not long enough. My wife can get 54mpg average on the MFD, but by the time the engine is warmed up I'm halfway to work. I can usually do something around 52mpg (just judging from this week). Either way, it's still not summer (although we've had a few springlike days), and ~50 mpg is darn good.
You'll find significant tank-to-tank swings in the difference, in large part because of the bladder. I've tracked the difference between MFD and actual mileage for over three years, with the MFD on the high side an average of about 2.8%. See the spreadsheet below (long overdue for an update, but you get the gist of it).
