My company has a fleet of Prii for security patrol around the parking lot. For the most part, they creep around the parking lot at 25MPH or less, and stop at a bunch of stop signs. Ever now and then, they are driven off campus to the satellite sites, and see some surface street and highway use. I was talking to a security lady today and she let me look at her Prius. The TPMS warning light was on, and she said she didn't know what that meant and it had been on for a while. The car was purchased around May 2012. It is a Prius II, sans all options. It already has 18K miles on it. One trip odo has 8K miles on it, indicated 42MPG, and 19 MPH of average speed with those miles. I thought parking lot use would get better than 50MPG, I guess not.
I would imagine it has what I call golf cart mode, (along with eco and power) but you have to be doing less than 15ish for it to work and like the previous poster said, it will need some actual driving to recharge. Does it have the option of "B" to drive in? My understanding that is for more long length driving thought that doesn't have any hills to help recharge. If you check out the the projected MPG it does say city is higher than highway, so that is quite peculiar. I know when I'm at a speed of about 30mph the mpg sits at right around 53mpg. Maybe they just need to drive faster!
I doubt they are using the EV mode. Most have not a clue how the Prius works. They all complain about the weird shifter. These Prii replaced a few 2006 Escape hybrids used for security. They all have well over 200K on them. SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 ? 2
All depends on driving style and when you DO NOT pay for the gas you do not care how accelerate or break !!! ... Also I bet they were sitting a lot with engine running for air during the summer and heat for the winter ... !!!! And YES TPMS severally under inflated tires are KILLING MPG !!! and tpms comes up with 20-25% loss of pressure ....
Fun with a calculator. Based on your numbers, I'm coming up with about $5k a year savings with the Prius using your example with a Ford Escape Hybrid as a baseline. 8K with that average mph is about 10 weeks (400 hours) of driving. Imagine the savings if they had replaced Crown Vics.
