My first tank of gas

Well, we need to know a little more than that. Where do you live, what was the weather like during the tank, what is the topography like, what do you keep your climate controls set to?
What are your tire pressures?

 

Well with the cooler temps mentioned and I am guess a comfortable setting on the climate control with some A/C usage, I am thinking the fuel economy is a tad low, but if you are just driving "normally" perhaps right on the mark.

Check those tire pressures. If you can stand 38 psi or more, that will help. Also, if you don't have to haul around the extra weight, don't.

 

My first tank was very similar to yours. I'm halfway through my second tank and the numbers are getting better. So everything you hear about tire pressure, etc. really works.
But my best advice for you is keep your spouse from driving your Prius. Mine ruins my average every time she gets behind the wheel!

 

Where do you live and where are you commuting to? Which highways are you taking? What speed are you maintaining?

I drive in from Pleasanton to Foster City, keep to the right and try to limit my top speed to 60 mph or below. My lifetime is 60 mpg (calculated). My wife would have a hard time getting 50 mpg doing the same commute, so some of it is your commute, some of it is the driver.

 

11.9 gallons and that is including the reserve.
I have driven down to 0 each time and never broke 10 gallons.
You shoudl change the price of gas to whatever it is when you fill up the tank.
That is how it will figure your monthly cost as well as your trip cost or comparison savings if you have them setup.

 

The Sunol grade really zaps the mileage, but otherwise you have some great opportunities for high mpg's with pulsing and gliding during slow and go traffic. The trick is that you have to let a sizable gap develop in front of you (the size that some will want to "jump into" the gap. Acclerate to start closing the gap, then let your foot off the gas pedal (and press lightly on the gas pedal to get rid of the small amount of recharging/engine braking and glide until you need to accelerate again (you need to watch the tail lights ahead of you to see if you need to accelerate or brake.

As far as fuel tanks, yes, it is approx 11.9 gallons. Even when you hit the Distance to Empty = 0, you still have about 2 gallons in the tank. A more accurate value would be to take your displayed tank MPG and multiply it by 10 and fill up at that point or sooner. You will find the car will take 10.5 gallons (+/- 0.2 gallons) at that point. Thus, if you are displaying 47.9 mpg, you could fill up at 479 miles and put in about 10.5 gallons. Your tank capacity will be very close to 11x displayed MPG (sometimes it is less than 11x, so try not to push it......it depends on how "full" you got it on your previous fill-up.

Have fun!

47 >> 12 mpg, I can imagine how nice it is to only spend 25% the amount of money on gas, and you still have the truck for Truck-like loads/tasks. Great combo!

 

I live north of Montreal, Canada; it's been extremely cold & snowy. I got 267 miles (429.7 Liters) on my first tank of dealership gas; with 30.44 miles indicated remaining (49 KM).

That gives me 31.79 MPG (or 7.4 L /100 K) - still better than my 2007 Corolla with a winter 21MPG

 

My truck stays parked 95% of the time but I do find that if I don't start it every couple weeks or at least once a month, the battery gets low enough to need a jump sometimes and I've had to charge it twice with an external charger to bring it back up. Probably good to take it for a spin around the block from time to time to keep the oil on all the important parts too. On my Prius, I've been filling up within 50 miles of the beep and flashing last bar on the gauge and still rarely put in 10 gallons. One of the members on here filled to overflow and drove to engine shutoff. They got over 800 miles on the tank and it took over 13 gallons. I would never attempt that unless emergency conditions forced me too. The book says 11.9 gallons is the tank capacity and since my fill ups at the last bar flash averaged 9-9.5 gallons, I figure going up to 50 miles past the flash in a car that gets me 45 - 50+ mpg is still a safe margin. Enjoy!

 

The only number of interest to me in the above is the 47.2MPG. You don't say, but I'm guessing that what the car's telling you. Toyota has for some reason programmed that statistic to read VERY optimistic.

If you want to know what mileage you're actually getting, you'll need to start to calculating it: logging distances and gas quantities.

With our 2010 I've calculated mileage for 3 years, and the calculated vs dash displayed error is currently 7.6%. Using that value, fwiw, your actual mileage would be around 43.9MPG.

That's kinda low for pure commuting, decent distances. What speeds are you doing? The Prius tends to do best around town, lower speeds. One tip off: the rated mileage is actual better for City.

The first tank is a crap shoot too, especially if it's the tank from the dealership. The car could have sat idling, been on test drives, multiple short distance start ups.

Look in the Owners Manual: there's a few tips in there. Also hang out here, listen, read. There's lots of potential.

cleanmpg is another site you could check out. It's not devoted to a single car/brand, just a single goal, to improve mpg regardless of your vehicle.

This is a common question. A question for you: what are you hoping to accomplish? Achieve a higher number of miles on a tank? And why?

Toyota's likely being very conservative in the prediction of miles to empty. They don't want to strand you by the side of road, or worse: in the middle of a busy intersection.

I'm completely lost on this. Is this some function built into the car, to tell you how much you're spending on gas? Again, I wouldn't buy into any calculation aid the car's offering, it's grossly exaggerating the MPG statistic.

 

Learn how to pulse and glide, there's a video here that teaches you how to do just that. Do a search to find it. Also, consider tracking your mpg on Fuelly.com - Track and Compare Your MPG because the instrument panel on the Prius's are about 4 mpg's off. Try not to over fill when you pump gas into your car, in other words stop pumping gas when it first stops and do that on a regular basis to get a more accurate consistent mpg reading. Good luck to you and ENJOY!

 

Turn off the air conditioning surely you'll have a much better MPG figure then?