Austin had nothing but gridlock on the way home (please no replies about it being worse elsewhere - I am sure someone has worse traffic) I noticed that the MFD showed my average MPG was about 25 for about 45 minutes. Is this normal in gridlock. For some reason I thought the Prius would do better under 20 MPH. For the first 30 minutes of this it was way under 20 just getting to a red light....
When you are not moving, your mileage is going to be 0 mpg. The Prius does better than other cars in gridlock, but it's still a sub-optimal way to drive. Tom
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ghostrider @ Oct 31 2006, 10:15 PM) [snapback]341697[/snapback]</div> I find it seems to vary a lot. On a hot day with the AC cranked, it will be low. If it's fairly level ground and I can creep along without running the engine a lot, then it does better. I don't remember seeing 25, though, that does seem pretty low... The worst seems to be the speed up to 60, then stop and roll a while, then speed up to 60 that seems to happen between exits on the freeway in the morning.
Gridlock? Or slow and go? I do fantastic in slow and go traffic, just creeping along on EV. My mpg goes up from around 51-52mpg to 55-57mpg.
I think it depends how much you can take advantage of the electric motor in those 45 minutes. As your battery gets low it has to go to gas, and part of the gas goes to regen'ing the battery. One of the problems with gridlock is that you have people behind you & people to the side who'd love to get in front of you, so you have to keep pace with traffic, and can't get the most optimal use of your energy. I can do really well going slow on side streets by my house if nobody's behind me. But I'm going reeeaaallllly slow.
if in standstill gridlock and 2 bars left, the ICE will intermittently start to recharge battery. THIS is what will kill your mpg. but on the lighter side, your ICE is not on the whole time unlike the cars around you.
I've found that it's generally better, MPG wise, more fun, and faster to take surface streets, once you get to know the area and the traffic on those streets. For example, if i were to take the highway here during my commute, it would take me 30-45 minutes, with a low MPG. If i instead choose to take one of the main roads the entire way, it takes 15-20 minutes, with a higher MPG. If i take a certain series of back streets, it takes 12-15 minutes with the highest MPG. It's definitely worthwhile to go exploring occasionally and learn traffic patterns outside of your normal path.
I sit in traffic every day. I'm in it long enough for the EV mode to drain the battery and the engine will kick in at the lightest press on the gas pedal. That dramatically reduces my mileage, but since I'm creeping along so slow, I don't make very many miles anyway.
