multi passenger / under-load fuel economy

I was dicussing with a friend of mine the viability of buying a used prius now that they have been in production for about 5 years. We are dedicated used car buyers. The last car I owned I got for free; it was a 13 year old Honda civic, and the last truck I bought was a 2000 Mazda B4000 4x4. I bought the Mazda in 2002. She just bought a 10 year old Nissan 4x4, and had a really old ford temp or something before that. So that's where I'm coming from.

I just read in Wired magazine that the 60 MPG mark is doable if you play the acceleration right, and that some people drive barefoot to get the best mileage possible based on the feel of the engines or something. That pretty much sold me. She is a doubter, and wants to know what kind of mileage a person could get if they were under load eg. 4 passengers or with a couple of dogs or a load of groceries or protest signs or meals on wheels or whatever.

I figure it would be very hard to get a constant measure on this. The weights will be highly variable and will be very inconsistent throughout the expenditure of a tank. However, it seems that folks could come up with some sort of estimate based on the likelyhood that a person will have to carry around more stuff than they usually would. People gotta move, you may have a friend who needs help getting the bake sale together or you've got to get your tools to the job site and the truck is in the shop.

I haven't seen this specific topic covered anywhere else. Would it be too much to ask if people could just post average mileage or calculated mileage while under load to this thread? Of course I would expect you to be driving to the best of your ability to maximize MPG.

 

Yeah I see what your saying about reading through the monthly averages threads; however, people seem to be posting just about mileage, and avg temps with an emphasis on getting the highest MPG numbers. So it seems that when people don't have numbers worth bragging over they might be disinclined to post. Personally I think 40 mpg is still worth hooting about.

Hopefully people will read this thread and get the idea to add some detail into their posts, and to post even when they have lower MPG numbers. Clearly the Prius rocks for MPG even when fully loaded or driving at higher speeds and with the A/C on.

I would like the monthly average posts to contain a little more detail about MPG figures that fall below 50. Like the ones I read where they explained that they took one trip at speeds over 60 mph, and the one that explained one trip included a full passenger load and gear.

Most days I expect a person would be getting the highest possible fuel efficiency because they are driving alone, but several times a month it can be expected that larger loads will be carried. If the number of days out of the month that a full load or larger that normal load was carried then the monthly averages posts would be helpful in explaining to doubters that the Prius is a must have vehicle for all driving styles.