My first 200 miles in NYC

~50mpg from NYC to NJ through Holland Tunnel in rush hour? Wow! It is worth getting NJ less expensive gas uh? It would pay for the the toll.

 

[font=Comic Sans MS:bd37bb891c]And you were't pumping poison into the air like all those other cars! Air quality will go up as people drive more hybrids.

99.9 MPG is the best you can get, according to the display. If you are going down hill with the ICE off and regeneratively charging the battery, that's really less than 0 GPM.[/font:bd37bb891c]

 

Display only goes to 99.9 mpg, though when you are coasting and engine is off you are actually getting infinite mpg. Also infinite mpg when using motor only.

 

[font=Comic Sans MS:ae3c8d488d]I have to quibble with you a bit Jay.

Since the ICE is used to charge the battery, you are still using gasoline energy, stored as electricity in the battery, when you are using the electric motor only. Going down hill you get less than 0 gallons per mile (putting kinetic energy transformed into electrical energy into the battery.) But since you had to climb that hill in the first place, and I know the ICE helped with that, you were changing gasoline energy into altitude (raising the kinetic energy potential of your Prius.)

There is no free lunch, but the Prius saves all that energy that a regular car turns into heat by storing some of it in the battery for later use. It is not infinite MPG. [/font:ae3c8d488d]

 

"Since the ICE is used to charge the battery, you are still using gasoline energy, stored as electricity"
By this logic you might as well say you are using the sun's energy which was absorbed from sunlight millions of years ago by photosyntheses and then stored as oil
Strickly speaking, if you are moving with the ice off, you are using no gas and therefore getting infinite miles per gallon. That the energy in the battery came from gas is no more relevent than that the energy in gas came from the sun.

 

[font=Comic Sans MS:149488ccfa]You only get infinite MPG with a perpetual motion machine.

But this is hijacking the discussion. Scott asked about 99.9 MPG; he gets that sometimes. And coasting or going down hill gives you less than 0 GPM, not MPG.[/font:149488ccfa]

 

I you saw 117 mpg, you were probably breathing too many of those nice ny/nj fumes.

 

[font=Comic Sans MS:1966e42e99]Maybe it was 11.7. I see that instantaneous MPG when going up a steep hill just after starting.[/font:1966e42e99]

 

you're a brave man...driving in nyc with a new prius. I hate driving in the city as it reminds me of bumber cars in a video game with rotten streets, random cyclists jumping out in front, beside or behind (one actually spit on my window once), getting caught half way into a turn as the light turns red, only to be flooded with folks walking across the street, tapping, slapping and pounding your car as they do, crazy taxi drivers screeching to a halt or cutting you off, etc, etc. I was driving my car in the city for Fleet Week and promised myself I would never take it into the city again, train for me next time!

 

Real world NYC experience: I keep my Prius in NYC and I am getting 42 mpg during the summer and 36-37 mpg in the winter. When I drive it home to Virginia I get close to 52 mpg. Real city driving kills the mpg.

 

It is true that when driving on electric power, mathmatically MPG is illegal because you are dividing by 0. But if you approach 0 gallons per mile, MPG approaches infinity, which is why we say you are getting infinite instantaneous miles per gallon. But I concede it can't be infinite, since you can't sustain that forever, which is why mathmeticians say divide by zero is invalid.

It is true though, the MFD maxes out MPG to 99.9, and displays that instead of Div/0 Err when driving in electric.

I read an anecdote saying that Israel purchased some military equipment for their military planes that would often reset. When tested by technicians, it worked perfectly, but would reset on specific maneuvers.

Turns out that they were flying close to the dead sea, which is below sea level. When they passed through sealevel, the equipment registered a div/0 error and would reset.