I bought my Prius C 2013 a few months ago and mainly use it on the weekend for short trips around the DC area. I wanted to ask what most people see for their total mileage range when the fill up their tanks? Mine is around 340 I believe (I need to check) but I wanted to see if that is normal as it seems a little low. Thanks for the advice and info! -Chris
so much to factor in but off the top sounds very low. a full tank is 9.5 gallons, so you're averaging close to 36mpg.
I agree, that does seems quite low. I'll check when I can to see for sure, but I normally get far higher than 36mpg, closer to at least mid 50's or higher if I am not doing highway driving. thanks again.
Miles per tank means little without some indication of how deep one is willing to drain the tank before refueling. Some people fill up with the gauge showing half a tank remaining, many fill at 3 or 2 bars, some more go until the last bar starts flashing, and a few push another an hour or two beyond that warning. These various groups get vastly different numbers of miles per tank. How far down do you push your fuel gauge?
I can usually get about 400 on a tank before I start to worry about it. But I do quite a bit of highway driving too. I once filled up with 9.2 gallons of gas. That was too close for comfort!
I usually fill up when the bars are two to three from the bottom, so I don't push it too far as I am always worried about running out of gas. I suppose the overall miles per tank info isn't the best indicator but I just thought it would be higher once I have a full tank. Thanks everybody for the info!
I'm averaging 483.9 miles per tank at 9.28 gallons. But most of that was the first year of ownership when I was driving a ton. This year I'm averaging 451.2 miles per tank at 9.37 gallons. Darn shorter drive.
How are you getting 9 plus gallons of gas into the tank? When I am on one bar flashing, beep, 0 gal. and drive that way for 15 or 20 minutes, I put about 8.3 gal in the tank. Do you fill up early in the morning when the storage tank is coolest, less gas vapor?
When the light flashes you have ~1.5 gallons of gas left. I drive for another (insert current tank mpgs here) then fill up.
Few facts given = many assumptions made. I fill up at around 1-2 lights. 8.2-ish gallons. 340-360 miles. 41-43 mpgs. Miles divided by gallons = mpgs. What's normal, anyway? Normal for who? 53city/46hwy. Depends on the outside temp and type of road, mostly. .
I usually fill my c back up around 2-3 bars. I don't want to risk running it dry, then having it die on the freeway or somewhere far from a gas station. So I usually get about 7 to 8 gallons a fillup. I also do about 2/3 highway, 1/3 to work. In winter time in Wisconsin with snow tires, I usually get about 42-47 mpg after a fill up. Not bad considering I don't use a block heater, although I do block the front grill. During the summer months it's been averaging 55-58 mpg a fill up. I've noticed the car tends to err on the high side according to the display, but calculating it myself, by dividing my total trip by the gallons on fill up, it's generally 2-3 mpg lower than what the computer says. So if it shows 60 mpg, I'm probably getting 57-58. That said however, I realize that it's not going to be 100% accurate either, especially because I have to take it on the freeway a lot.
You are not going to run out of gas when there are 2-3 bars left. How paranoid are you guys? I'm getting about 420-450 before I fill up once it starts flashing. I also noticed I'm getting about 2.5 less mpg than the display shows as someone else pointed out. Even at 420-450 miles I still have only filled up at 8.7 gallons max. I also run the ac non stop during the summer usually on low but it's always on. The range is not consistent with how many miles you expect to get. There are times when the range doesn't move for like 10 miles while driving and I'm not driving on pure ev.
That depends on where you are, how you are driving, and various weather and road conditions. PS. The first car I actually owned did run out of gas with the gauge still reading about 'E'. Starting with the gauge at half a tank, it would not be able to traverse some of the sections pictured above.
Your really going out on a limb here. Clearly anyone in those situations would rather fill up and maybe carry a gas can but my point was there is no way you will run out of gas in even a semi normal environment. If you see a sign that says no gas for 500 miles you might not even make it with a full tank.
^ You don't give your location, so I don't know what is 'normal' for your environment. But 70+ mile sections without fuel service are normal for my trips, even in 2014. A few decades ago, before some stations were added to those sections and I drove cars with much shorter fuel range, 100+ miles was normal. And as you can see, that 106 mile warning is on a U.S. Interstate Highway, not some back road. I took that picture in March this year. The Canadian sign was in a National Park, but the Trans-Canada Highway, essentially Canada #1, has a no-gas section of the same length within my normal vacation road trip zone. During foul weather, such as winter, fuel planning is very highly recommended before reaching even 3 bars.
