Squeezing out 37.1 MPG around town

It would only be worse in a normal car. Keep telling yourself that.

Tom

 

Are you pulsing-and-gliding?
Do you ever shift to "B"?
Is the oil overfilled?

 

How long are your trips? Short trips are MPG killers.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(debrasnell @ Oct 30 2007, 01:12 PM) [snapback]532482[/snapback]</div>

Here is a tip driving in hilly area. When going uphills, do not accelerate lower than 25 MPG. Consumption screen clearly shows and it is very easy to read. Prius can climb pretty steep hills at 55MPH and still get 25MPG. When going downhill, use stealth warp (left up your foot and gently put the pressure back). You can see on the Energy screen that only the Battery is providing power to go down the hill and using no gas. If you gain speed, let it gain. Also when you climb, let the car slow down to acceptable speed while not blocking traffic behind you. Overall, you should average 50MPG. The key is to plan ahead to avoid sudden change in power demand (light foot).

It is also good to know the limitation of the regen braking. Slow down about 2 MPH per second. That's the max rate the HV battery can take. Brake any faster and the friction pad will kick in, throwing away the gas you used to accelerate.

 

I think he was asking if you had it on B because it usually screws up your milage...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(debrasnell @ Oct 31 2007, 12:09 AM) [snapback]532751[/snapback]</div>

http://www.techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/b-mode.html

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(debrasnell @ Oct 30 2007, 11:09 PM) [snapback]532752[/snapback]</div>

Don't use B it is an aid to going down steep hills it will in fact be less efficient then just using your brakes. Most of my driving is in hills, the Prius is efficient on the flat but with careful driving you can get even better millage on hills. Search this site and read up on the various techniques and the way the Prius works and it will all start to come together.

Gary

 

Not far from home, on my way home I have a long steep up hill followed by a valley crossing, it always gets me a good mileage and I hit the flat run home with a green battery and get through the back roads to home on mainly that well charged battery.

 

Living in Florida, (Competely Flat ) I almost always get 50mpg plus or minus 1mpg. On a recent trip up to Pittsburgh Pa I got 47mpg on the trip up and back (75 to 80 mph ).

The intresting thing is that on two tanks while driving around Pittsbugh, ( Known for its hills ), I got 56mpg. That is the highest I have ever got. The only differance is that half the time there I was without air conditioning while in Florida I almost always have it on.

I also noticed that in Pittsburgh I had a lot more times when I had full green bars on the display.

To sum up, I think the hills helped my mpg.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(debrasnell @ Oct 30 2007, 11:09 PM) [snapback]532752[/snapback]</div>

Eek! No, you should *not* use "B" in normal driving. It should be used only to avoid riding the brake pedal on a long downhill, for example when coming down Mount Hamilton or Mount Wilson. In everyday driving "B" won't damage anything but it will reduce your MPGs.

Now I'm trying to figure out why you would observe an increase in MPGs the first time you used B. Are you reporting the maximum figure seen on the instantaneous display? If so, don't pay a lot of attention to that; what matters is the per-tank average value on the display. (Flip back and forth between the "Energy" and "Consumption" displays to see the difference.)

The best single piece of advice about driving style to improve MPGs may be to use the brake (and B) as little as possible.

 

Grass Valley is a nightmare for maxing out MPG in my opinion. The LONG hills make for a rough commute and the fact that most people freak out when you try to drive the speed limit and they tend to ride you pretty hard on the one lane portions.

Sacramento in general is tough because there are few areas where you can drive slowly and going slower than 65mph in I80 is just plain dangerous! lol

 

We are getting about 37 mpg also. Live on a hill with hairpin turns so must slow way down. Wife works close to the bottom of hill so don't get much freeway driving in to average up. 99 Camry got 18 mpg.

 

I drive mostly in the quite hilly area in Eastern TN (Maryville/Alcoa), and around "town" I only usually get in the low 40's.

If I end up going to the city (Knoxville) via highway, that'll bring me up into the mid 40's.

My biggest problem is the short trips. When you live in a smaller city like this, everything is so close that even bunching trips together is a short ride...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Miss_Taz @ Nov 1 2007, 06:03 PM) [snapback]533438[/snapback]</div>

There's an easy answer to that: For short trips, use a bicycle. In my opinion, that means any trip shorter than 5-10 miles. Unless it rains or a bicycle just doesn't do the job. My daily commute is 2*5 miles, increasingly by bike. It gets to be a habit.

 

Someone already alluded to this, but you might want to give this a read:
http://www.techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/sweet/

Hobbit gives a pretty good summary here of how to try and keep the engine in the sweet spot. My quick summary is climbing up hills try to never get below 30mpg or so. On the down hills try to keep below 75mpg. If you pick up too much speed, alternate between <75mpg and warp stealth (no bars or slight charge/electric mode only). His basic idea seems to be that this keeps the engine in an optimal zone, and sweeps the "CVT" ratio. If you go below 30mpg the engine revs and efficiency drops. If you go higher than 75mpg with the engine running you are just burning gas and not really making much useful power due to too low RPMs. Note that these mpg numbers are just estimates of where the system will move in and out this more efficient mode. At speed slower than ~40 the mpg numbers shift lower. If you do this at higher speeds for a while you can get used to the sound of the engine when its in this rpm band. Then you can try and maintain it during acceleration as well. If you can match this to your hills, so that you are bleeding off a little speed on the uphills, and attacking the bottom of an uphill with a little extra speed all while maintaining this rpm band you might see some significant improvement.

I'll freely admit I'm still a novice, but after adding this method into my routine I'm seeing much more impact than I would have predicted. Previously I have really just been trying the "common sense" stuff. Don't go too fast, accelerate and brake slowly & smoothly, bleed off some speed uphill, carry speed into uphills etc. I have a fairly short (7 mi) mostly freeway (~63mph) commute with gentle hills and have been averaging ~50-51mpg for weeks. I started "hobbiting" a few days ago, with 50.5mpg @ ~100mi on the MFD. I'm now at 53.7mpg @ 222mi. I would think the effect could be more dramatic in a hillier area, where you might easily be spending more time in the <30mpg and 75-99 mpg "red zones". I don't think I've achieved the 63mpg@63mph stage of enlightenment yet, but I'll keep working on it B)

Rob

 

I am brand new to the Prius world. So far i am loving the car. 2007 with 212k. I drive all day. Usually about 20-30 miles of highway to get to my starting point for my day. Then it is stop and go, stop and go for the next 5-6 hours. Often times only a few minutes between each stop. Then after a day of that it is another 20-30 miles highway back home.

I have been averaging 42 MPG. I have no idea if this is good MPG for this car. But it sure beats the 20 MPG I was getting in my Subaru.

 

I get avg of 40mph in town and 65mpg at 55mph and use B as a brake with light to moderate friction brake, seems to regen faster
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