First thing you should do is....

EXCEPT Prius onwers/fans lawyers

 

Snowbell - Congrats on your new Prius!! (under 500 miles is very new!) There's a couple of threads in the Care and Maintenance Forum about exerior and interior detailling products - check 'em out. Also, try using PWR just to get onto the highway, then turn it off - you'll still have plenty of power at your disposal if you need it.

 

Arrrgggg, can't get mental immmmaaaagggeee out of myyy heaaaaad.

 

I'm Sorry.

 

It doesn't have to be input: the tyres roll on the dynamometer's rollers, so the rolling resistance is actually fairly representative (I don't know if any adjustment is made for relative abrasiveness of tarmac or concrete versus the roller's surface!) I did observe that when VCA - the Vehicle Certification Agency in the UK - is verifying manufacturer-submitted results, they set the pressure to 1.5 times the manufacturer's recommended pressure, or max sidewall, whichever is lower.

 

Yup, he's full of it. The 2010 doesn't have a bladder and that ain't horse manure!

More seriously, there is a school that says don't run out of gas because of the crap that accumulates in the tank. Bob did his test with his new Prius and a spare can of gas for when he ran out. It's one of those things that should come with a warning: don't try this at home!

 

You seriously had a sales person say this to you?

Hopefully, it wasn't someone who held himself out as a Prius expert! The bladders did present a problem in knowing just how much fuel was left in the tank, but the last bladders were shipped in the 2009 models.

And, yes, it is the same stuff that comes not just from any bovines, but particularly from the un-castrated male of the species.

 

You have a good point, that would take care of two out of four anyway. Of course as you said they may well allow a boost of tire pressure to run on the dyno. Also of interest, I know at one time the EPA computed fuel used by measuring emissions from the tail pipe rather than measuring the actual quantity of fuel going through the engine. Don't know if they still do it that way or not. There original methods didn't work to well with the first hybrids and gave very optimistic numbers for city mileage Originally 61 MPG for the Gen2 I think, which was later lowered to 48.

 

Hi tthompson,

It depends on what you do with the car after the gas runs out. If you keep driving it, and its a Gen II, there is a good chance you will take the battery State of Charge (SOC) down so low that a cell will become reverse biased, and that may damage that cell in the battery.

There is a report on here that the Gen III Prius wont run at all when the gas is gone. Thus avoiding damaging the battery. But whatever your car does when it runs out of gas, just get it to the side of the road and park it. Do not try to use the electric to get you some place convient, because in the long run it will be a 50/50 chance of being very expensive. Such battery abuse is sometimes not covered by Toyota.