Care and Feeding Almost New Prius

First off, welcome to PriusChat!

Second, where do you live? We urge members to put at least their state of residence in their "personal info" (which shows on the left side of every post you make), partly becasuse on MPG questions, the first question that will pop into people's minds is often, "what's the climate where he/she lives"?

Third, how long are most of your trips? If you use it to commute, how many miles? Have you driven it on trips of 30 miles or more?

All Priuses get less than maximum MPG when driven on shorter (e.g., 5-20 miles) trips because a lot of the car's energy upon being started is focussed on warming up the catalytic converter to make the emissions system work properly. Don't know how much you may have already read here on these basics.

32-36 MPG is not acceptable to most of us under almost any driving conditions, and, as you say, you already know how well another Prius will do under nearly the same conditions. How long have you owned yours and how many miles have you put on it?

 

Do a VIN search to see whether it has been in any accidents. (If it is a salvage, I'd run away from it and not bother with the next step. Too many inobvious yet serious things can go undetected and unrepaired in a complicated car like this.)

As with any used car, pay a mechanic (Prius certified, of course, which most likely means at a Toyota dealer) to assess its condition before you decide whether to buy it. It could be a creampuff with an easily correctible problem, or the previous owner may have ruined it somehow. Better to find out before you buy.

Oops, my bad, you already own it. Then definitely have a Prius mechanic check it out.

 

Best probably to get a genuine Toyota air filter. You could use another brand, but you might need some retrofitting to get it to fit and seal properly in the filter housing. Any good brand oil filter of the correct size will work.

But to your main question on how to turn off the Maint. Reqd. light. Being sure that the ODO is in ODO and not trip A or trip B, power up the car while holding down the ODO button until the dashes disappear on the ODO display. After that, the Maint. Reqd. will start blinking on powerup after 4500 miles has elapsed since reset, and will remain on after 5K has elapsed.

Mileage: Those short trips are probably your culprit. Avoid the defrosters whenever posssible. When at stops, turn off the AC and the ICE should shut down if it is somewhat warm. Otherwise it will remain running to bring the coolant temp close to its high mark so it can warm the cabin heater core.

 

FRAM filters are high quaility and have a nice texture coating so that they can be removed without any tools. No fitting problems.

Try driving your brother's car and your car over the exact same route and compare the instant and overall mileage and when the ICE is on. Then you can describe the situation to a mechanic better. If the mileage is that bad it should be covered by warranty or lemon law. It would incredibly frustrating but that's how it goes. Worst case scenario is sell it to someone else in warm weather.

 

Actually the basic orange-can Fram is one of the worst oil filters you can buy. They are very poorly constructed, and this was brought up in a previous topic.