Despite my what seemed to be a rather depressing post earlier, I am here to report that I'm ~50 miles in and my average readout in consumption has just nicked 44mpg combined driving in highway/city from the ~30mpg I started early with. This is from my ~20min drives to and from work. And it's not even summer here in the south, yet. I'm starting to get the hang of this car. I will dealing with the finance dept some time soon to go over canceling the extended warranty and GAP (odd cause I never asked for GAP on neither the 1st and 2nd figures form redo...little sneakers). Get my car refinanced with a better interest rate and I'll be good to go for starters. The MSRP amount for extended warranty here was a little over $2000. Nuts. I managed to get it down to 1500 but seeing that I can get it even better online is a great relief. Any bit helps. This forum is a great service to not ripping peoples arms and legs off. I need to read into it a lot more.
It will help only if you can cancel the dealer ext warranty, get a good rebate and buy the $990 here. If you can, tell them why and perhaps they will refund that $500+
I asked them if they could match the $990 I found but no luck. So, I got it canceled but I have to wait for the cancellation process to go through cause they already sent the forms off. By the way, I managed to get a few more miles for highway/city combined. So, that makes it 45-46mpg. I made my first trip out of town today and I got 49.5mpg. Woot! I used to get bored driving at the wheel of an automatic but now it's fun to actually feel a challenge off the car. Eventually, I won't have to look at the Energy screen and can just watch the Consumption screen for my Average MPG.
The challenge is fun because you feel more connect to the road. Thanks to the instant response from the electric motor, it is very fun and entertaining to manage and maintain the car momentum. An example of a hidden hybrid premium feature!