Gas Tank Mystery Solved?

Reminds me of Kramer test driving the car on Seinfeld.....LoL.

 

It is the latter. In the Gen II you could run out of gas and still use the HV battery to get to gas station. Many people abused the use of the HV battery resulting in premature battery failures in some instances.

In the Gen III when you run out of gas you can no longer use the HV battery, so they are being conservative to keep you from "dying beside the road".

There are many threads on here if you want to bother to search.

 

When I picked up my PIP, the last thing the salesman said to me before I drove away was, "Don't run it out of gas!" In fact he said it twice... So I am taking his word and filling up at about 1/4 tank or a little less, especially if I am going to be driving on interstate highways at all... LOL

 

There is an extensive history (dating back to 2001) detailing how the decision of when to suggest refill was made.

Search this forum. Then search the internet for the information from the Classic model, prior to discussion here.

It is a sensible choice when all of the variables at play are known... especially consumer behavior.

 

I fill when I See two bars. No reason to push it! just my peace of mind.

 

+1 Agree

 

My personal experience is that the car is smart enough not to let that happen and will protect the battery at all costs. I ran out of gas at least 4 times in my Gen II. Every single time it happened, the car was smart enough to not let that last battery bar disappear. Power gradually dropped off until I either made it the gas station, or pulled over safely. It never let me completely drain the battery past that safe level. At the time I didn't have a Scan Gauge, so I don't know how low the SOC is allowed to get it before the car says "get some gas dude, we ain't going no where".

I have a hard time believing that pushing the car like that would result in premature HV battery failure, unless you did something to further push things, like repeatedly trying to restart the car after you have dropped to that last bar and been forced to pull over, but before you've gotten gas.

 

When the little car icon next to the gas tank says 0, I get gas immediately.
And, it will only take MAX 8.5 gallons.
I'm known for pushing the envelope for time/gas fill ups and have admittedly run out of gas in every Prius I have owned at least twice.. and my 2007 even more than that. The worst instance of running out was on 10/10/10 in Malibu... but we shant speak of that again!

Now, with 23K on my plugin, I have yet to run out of gas or even come close. I'm not willing to risk the car's battery and technology... not this car! It's my favorite Prius yet! ​

 

The most I've put in a tank so far is 9.37 gallons.

 

The most I've put in 9.0 gallons gas.

 

I put 10.2 - 10.5 in pretty much every fill....

The pump will click off at around 7-8 gallons from dead nutz empty. You can manually get 2+ gallons in after that. I look at it as spending 3 more minutes at the pump toping off buys me an aditional 300+ miles or 2 wees of driving... Worth it to me.

 

how many miles past '0 miles to empty' do you typically drive?

 

You can't really answer that question. My daily commute is 15 miles pure electric down hill to work and 10 miles electric up hill 5 miles gas home. So I can go 3-4 days past zero or technically 120 miles. because only 25ish of it is actually past zero. I typically go fill up between 0 and 10 miles of gas engine past the zero. but if I know I'll be electric for a few days I push it.

 

i meant dte which is gas plus whatever ev charge is available. i don't understand how you're emptying the gas tank without going 100 miles or so beyond dte.

 

I don't agree. My PIP was filling one night a few weeks ago and I went inside to get some Monster Energy Drink or something. When I came out I thought I saw 8.4 (normal fill) but it must have shut off at .84 and I was just too tired to notice. Next morning it still showed empty so I thought maybe the gas gauge is glitched or something, I even made an appt. at Toyota for next morning to get it looked at. Anyways I drove to work and that night headed back home part of my 98.6 mile round trip . About 90 miles after the "Fill up" it started stuttering and I thought, oh cr@p I really am out of gas! Anyways I had about 2 miles EV I had regenerated on the way, used it up and then used up most of the regular post EV battery partition to get to a gas station. I filled up 10.5 gallons and was then on my way without a hitch.

My Bad totally, but nice to know the reserve is very large I guess... Nice to have EV backup as well..

 

sounds like you should have got the 5 hour energy!

 

OK, question... Is the ICE in the PIP able to get gas back into the injectors if they run dry? Or does the ICE quit somehow before that happens. I have run Diesel and Gasoline tractors with fuel injection out of gas and it was a major pain of a job to get the lines bled and back working. So how does this work on the Prius?

 

i don't know, but when i ran out of gas in my gen II, the aaa guy shot a couple gallons in and i was good to go.

 

As long as there's power to run the fuel pump and crank the engine, I can't see any problem with starting the car after running out of gas and refilling it. I see people walking around with gas cans all the time on the highway.