can someone please explain the consumption screen to me? I understand the little green cars but what exactly is the vertical column on the extreme right side telling me? Thanks
Hi Valerie, The extreme right bar is your current MPG (referred to as iMPG or instantaneous MPG). To the left of it are historical 5 minute bars representing the 5 minute average MPGs for the last 30 minutes since you started to car. Welcome to PC,
(picture from john1701a) John's Stuff - Toyota Prius, How It Works The Consumption screen is made of two main parts, historic mpg and instant mpg. The Historic MPG is the collection of six vertical bars indicating how you did over the past 30 minutes. The most recent five minutes is on the right with the timeframe of 25-30 on the left. These bars move from right to left as time elapses. The Instantaneous MPG gives a vertical bar indicating your MPG rating at this very moment. Or rather, within a few seconds but close enough. For that reason, when you are stealthing the Instant bat will be at the very top. When accelerating hard, it will be very low.
I wish the histogram could switch between slots of 5 minutes into slots of 5 or 10 kilometers. A time-based x-axis can be misleading. You could have a bad fuel consumption for the first 5 minutes but only drive a short distance for example. My first 5 minutes on my daily drive are spent mostly in low-speed streets with the ICE heating up and waiting at red lights, then climbing a hill to reach the highway. I usually get an awful 9 L/100km during those 5 minutes in which I only drive 1 km. Then I get 4.0 L/100km for the next 5 minutes during which I drive 8 km. So my average fuel consumption is 9*1/9 + 4.0*8/9 = 4.6 L/100km (51 US mpg) However the histogram shows one bar at 9, one bar at 4 which leads you to think the average was (9+4)/2 = 6.5 L/100km (36 US mpg)
If your Prius is displaying a consumption screen, get it on antibiotics right away. Try to keep it quarantined for a week while it is still contagious, but if you do drive, wear a mask and gloves. Heavy acceleration may produce some coughing and sputtering, but these symptoms should improve as the antibiotics take hold. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Tom
ValerieG, I second what Stefx says about the information presented on the consumption screen being somewhat confusing. I'd even go farther and say that the whole consumption screen is very pretty, but save for the iMPG graph, nearly useless. For more on this vein of thought, go here: http://priuschat.com/forums/fuel-economy/42280-mfd-energy-graph-mpg-h-better-way.html
I've often thought the same thing but then I realize I would be totally confused since we don't use kilometers here. Another thing I've thought about was a setting to go from 5-minute bars to 1-minute bars. There could still be 30 minutes of history but the bars would be in five segments. I mean, come on; the bars are so stinking wide it's ridiculous. Something else would be the ability adjust the decimals points on the average. Just, perhaps, to 2 decimals rather than just the one. I've often wondered - especially towards the end of the tank - whether that ".3" is a high or low ".3". Or even if it's actually ".26" rounded up.
Rokeby, thanks for the link to the other thread, very interesting. So, what we need is another button to switch between time/distance x-axis, and a "zoom in/out" function to reduce or increase the resolution of the x-axis (1-3-5-10 minutes, 1-3-5-10 km/miles)
I've always thought the x-axis should be miles. If the y-axis were then inverted, showing gallons per mile (like in Europe it's l/100km) then the area under the curve is how much fuel you've used. That would be cool. -CB
Canada also uses L/100km One advantage, like you said, is that L/100km multiplied by distance (in hundreds of km) gives you liters. 5 L/100km on 600 km = 30 liters. One disadvantage (compared to mpg) is that fuel economy becomes less obvious in the lower range... 4.5 L/100km doesn't sound much different than 3.5L/100km but it's still a lot. In US mpg, the same would be 53 mpg and 67mpg, it sort of amplifies the delta and makes it more obvious. On the gas guzzler range, where 10mpg and 14mpg don't sound much different , 24 L/100km and 17 L/100km make that difference a bit more obvious.
"You were obviously suffering from consumption Valerie..." Conspicuous consumption? Actually "I" have been suffering from Lyme. Just got off of 3 weeks of antibiotics. Luckily was well enough to pick up my lovely new prius this last week. Is there any way of changing the default screen to the audio? I don’t want to watch my mgp every driving minute when I should be watching the road.
