Strange Pumped and Wasnt full?

Welcome to Prius-dom, and to the world of the flexible Prius fuel bladder!

You might consider searching here for many threads discussing the bladder's idiosyncracies. But in short, it takes less fuel in cold weather and it tends to be finicky at fillup time.

Also, don't judge your MPG results on just one tank. Because of the bladder's flexibility, you can see some fairly wide swings in tank-to-tank results. Several here, me included, have tracked actual tank results over several fillups (in some cases, for years) and compared them to MFD results, and found the MFD to be very close.

 

Also, it takes a bit before the fuel gauge catches up with the fill level. Give it a minute or two.

Tom

 

also, the prius is unable to "access" the final gallon or two in the tank. So with an 11.9 gallon tank & 50mpg don't expect to drive 600 miles on the tank or YOU WILL RUN OUT OF GAS & LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT.

each blip represents approx 1 gallon of gas, after the 10th blip starts blinking you have around 2 gallons left, go directly to a gas station & don't pass GO.

For maximum gas mileage always use Chevron gas in SoCal (try to use the same pump at the same station every week). I usually get +2mpg with chevron, if you need gas & there's no chevron avail try Shell, I get +1mpg with shell. Also to maximize fuel economy carry as little weight as possible & add gas in the early morning or late at night if the neighborhood is safe enough to do so. (not likely in SoCal)

 

What Jimbok is referring to is -- sometimes the pump shuts off before the tank is full. Others here can explain the reason better than I can (and have done so in other threads, if you search for them). When I first got my car I went to one gas station where I couldn't even get one gallon into the tank. So I drove to another station and had no problem filling it up there. So if you try a different gas station, you will probably not have any problems. In the 9 months since I've had my car, I've only had a problem with that one pump.

As for the bladder, I'm assuming it is not that cold where you live, so you should not have too much of a problem with weather affecting your tank. I filled up at 5 pips the other day when it was about 40 degrees outside and still got 4.5 gallons, so if you were down to one pip then 6.5 gallons definitely did not fill it up for you.

 

Do a search in the forum on "guess gage" for more information about this phenomenon.

 

Interesting comments.

Of course it doesn't matter how many gallons of the tank a car can access, if you try to get 600 miles out of any car with an 11.9 gallon tank while getting 50 MPG, you will always run out of gas.

11.9 * 50 = 595

Not sure that I agree with your fuel brand choices, and I doubt that the time of day that you fill up will make a noticeable difference in your mileage.

As many people here have found out, when the 10th pip starts blinking, you don't know how much fuel you have left. You might get another 100 miles, or you might run out of gas in less than 20 miles. The safest way to avoid running out is to either fill up before you get to that point, or else proceed to the nearest gas station once it happens.