Is The Prius Losing Its Purpose?

We just purchased our Prius in February. We have noticed several things with the mileage.
We live in a small town, [SIZE=+0]t[/SIZE]en minutes from one side of town to the other, and the mileage is lower until the car is warmed[SIZE=+0] up.
My wife works 8 miles from home and averages 51 mpg between in town and doing errands. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=+0]We have a gas station we stop at about twenty miles from home, as the fuel is usually ten cents cheaper per gallon than our town, when we come back from a trip to the big city. The highest with the car warmed up from that station to home was 61 mpg.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+0]We have noticed that the times we stopped at the box stores for fuel our mpg seemed to drop. However it was still in the higher 40’s combined. That is still a huge improvement from what the previous car did.[/SIZE]
We usually keep our car eight to ten years. When we started looking at the Prius fuel was only $2.65 a gallon. We figured the payback for the additional cost of the Prius compared to similar non hybrid cars and[SIZE=+0] at four years for our driving history. Now that fuel has jumped in price that will be a shorter payback.[/SIZE]
I like knowing that when stopped for traffic lights or stopped in traffic we are not wasting fuel.

 

welcome and all the best! it's wonderful, isn't it?

 

Regarding mileage sensitivity, if you were to compare to other less efficient ICE cars, you should really look at gallonage (see http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...-prius-losing-its-purpose-15.html#post1364010). You might find that the gallonage variance is less than you expect.

As for Civic, I haven't received my September 2012 issue of CR yet, but IIRC, the 2012 Civic scored too low to recommend now (which is unusual for the Civic). They found the car was significant step backwards. Besides the "fewer complexities" that you touch upon, do keep in mind that the 3rd gen Prius has no starter, alternator, reverse gear, clutch packs, torque converter, drive belt nor timing belt. The PSD in a Prius is arguably mechanically simpler than a conventional automatic.

 

I keep thinking I should move further away from work to get better mileage.

Yeah, I know that's not the answer.

Since this is off-topic, anyway, what use are the 5-minute intervals exactly? Assuming you're not trying different driving methods throughout to test it. Like, yesterday, my first bar was really low, as it always is, and then it went way higher, and by the end, it was 100, but that's because I was sitting in a drive-thru. It meant nothing, as I wasn't moving. So I learned nothing from those figures.

 

Woops! Wrong spot.

 

I had a 1994 Honda Civic VX model, this was the most economical model they made, had a 5 speed manual, no ac, and no power steering just manual steering. I believe no cars made today have manual steering.

l drove it for over
200,000 miles before giving it to my dad.

This was a 50 MPG real world car.

Honda blew it has their MPG figures actually came down.....

alfon

 

It's not too hard to create a high mpg car when your strip it down, take away a bunch of safety and convenience features then detune it to under 100hp. Just look at the 58 hp Geo Metro.

 

Since 'all' of my driving is 61 MPH on dead level ground, all of my drives resemble '8-bit' versions of the green line in this graph:

On cold days the slope is longer, and the 'limit' is lower, in the summer the slope is more abrupt but the 'limit' drops again due to excessive A/C use. But every day, this is what my 5 minute graph looks like. For those with stop signs, traffic, or hills, I bet there is more variation.

 

On today's EPA scale, it had 50 only on the highway. Combined, it dropped to 43. Without the shift indicator light, those numbers fell significantly.

Today's Civic Hybrid is a much bigger, heavier car with automatic (CVT), power everything, plenty of features, modern emission controls, modern safety, and a higher EPA combined.

 

Yeah, those old MPG numbers are not bad but a little car like that 1994 civic was a complete death trap compared to a modern car with its current safety features.

 

I suppose you could take a Prius out cold, reset FE guage, see when the FE stabilizes.

Last time I rented Prius, picked it up cold. Went 1 mile, gas up, reset FE guage. Got on freeway within a mile. FE was in the 20's, then 30's, 40's. After about 7 miles, it was up to 48 MPG.

At 11 miles, it was about 50. Once hitting the freeway, it climbed to about 57 MPG.

 

I'm a newbie, still learning and have only had my 2011 for three weeks, but even with the brutal heat here in SC this month running the A/C in auto mode set at 68 to 72 as long as I keep the car in eco mode and try to keep the bars in the full eco range (especially lower ECO) I have so far averaged 48mpg. My commute is 10 miles each way all flat of course but we use this car on the weekends and for all errands. My wife has a brand new 2011 Honda Pilot so I try not to use the tank as I call it unless we really have to. BTW I don't consider the Prius a small car I traded my 2008 Scion XB for it and have not had an issue with space. I would not compare it to a civic or sentra or any of the small gas cars that get the same or near the same mpg. You have to compare it to a car with equal wheelbase.

 

No small car gets the same mpg as the Prius unless you drive freeway only and even then not much compares except a VW TDI.

 

I rented a Focus and Elantra over the past few weekends. Ended up getting about 33 highway with Elantra and 26 combined. Focus I got about the same.