I tested my 2020 Prime's limits today to see how far I could go on a full charge and 1 gallon of gas. I almost made it to 140. 139.5 miles travelled, 139.2 reported mpg. I will confess that I might have used gravity to my advantage.
fir enough. i have been using gravity to my disadvantage for 65 years, mostly weighted to the second half of that time span.
Congrats. I am sure the gravity that helped you on the way can also hurt you on the way back, unless you are never coming back to where you started. It is a zero sum game. Just curious, how did you measure the 1 gal of gas use for that distance traveled? A full charge is easy to manage, but amount of gas used is not easily measured.
It is visible in the photo. Distance travelled and mpg are the same number, hence. 1 gallon has been reported as having been used. I had a 4200 foot overall drop, and drafted semis. I will use between 2 and 3 gallons when I go the other way tomorrow.
Oh, I see. I never thought of that. How clever! Now another question. Did you first used up the EV range or did you switch back and force between HV and EV until EV range depleted?
I used ev for the first 10 miles. It was flat freeway. I needed headroom in the battery for the downhill sections later. Then hybrid mode up the mountain, ev auto down the mountain. Drafted semis doing 60. Used openpilot and watched the car go.
I've made it 104 miles starting and ending in the same place (so no downhill cheating) on one gallon of gas (ok, maybe 1.1 gallons) and a full charge. I've also driven just over 60 miles all in EV mode, starting with the battery at 1% charge. So around 900 miles per kWh! I started the drive at 14,000 feet and ended at 5200 feet. The battery got up to about 80% on the way down before I got to the highway. Of course I got around 33 mpg on the way up.
104 miles round trip on nearly 1 gal is really efficient driving. Especially since you were not "leveraging a mountain" to do it. This is why I call my Prime a SuperCar. I was excited when Elio was promised to get 80 MPG. Now I have a car that can do that without trying very hard, on short trips. I have reached into the upper 70's on some long trips when I have patience. Since it is a Toyota, it also never leaves me stranded, and retains it's resale value better than most. I am no longer jealous of the Tesla's on the road. I have 640 miles of range, my refueling takes under 10 minutes, I don't need an app to find a source for that fuel on the road, and I am not on a first name basis with my local dealers service department manager. I still want a Tesla, I just can't justify it because of the Prime with OpenPilot, and the state and federal EV incentives that are still in effect for Toyota. I sold my 2017 Prime(60k miles) for $2k more than my new 2020 ended up costing me. So it is an affordable SuperCar.
I forgot to mention, that 104 mile trip is with a bike on the back of the car, and with snow tires on. I could probably do it in under 1 gallon without those things.
Snow tires and bikes on a rack are the perfect excuse for your low number. . I've done 76 miles round trip in my Gen3, from a cold engine both ways, with no EV miles available. So I was expecting much more than 104 from a Prime, under great conditions. Though we have numerous alums here who have done over 100 in Gen3, a few even in a Gen2. The very best of them even kept it up for a full tank. These performances require serious hypermiling.
