80-85mph highway mpg?

Even the Prius Two handles excellent at triple digit speeds. Last summer I was running ~75 mph at night in Wisconsin in a rental Two and popped a hill to find Mr Raccoon sitting in my lane so I maneuvered around him and all was fine. The Prius handled like a dream at that speed and that was on Mr Donut tires too boot

Mike

 

Thats similar to my driving speeds, you go fast when you need to and you drive slow when you want to, either way Prius is gas efficient. There is no need to stick to slow speed just because you drive a Prius period. Its call drive happy.

 

If you drive in Michigan running 60 anything you will have vehicles flying up behind you like you were parked. It's 70+ in Detroit day & night and even faster on the Interstates. Everyone is welcome to drive in the right lane at whatever speed they choose. Many just go with the flow. What is cool about the Prius is a person can drive slow or haul some serious nice person and it still will get amazing gas mileage.

Mike

 

In my defense, I believe its you slow poke drivers that doesn't pay attention while driving held up traffic and causes sudden full stop when it is not necessary!

I see traffic accidents when 1st driver didn't pay any attention and made complete stop for no apparent reason and then causes 4 cars behind them to pile up. (I just saw that last month 4 cars pile up and last car completely crashed and the impact causes that final car to swivel to my lane.)

If that first driver where to pay attention on being a active driver, she wouldn't have done any hard breaking there were several cars gaping distances between her and the car in front of her.

And of course ask the 4 cars behind her whose fault it was, they all say the car in front of them made sudden stop when there wasn't any car in front of the first driver. The first car driver also blamed a white car in front of her made a sudden stop...only no one can seem to believe her.

 

Well in my defense my slow-poke driving is always in the right lane. Plus I always find I have tons of time to react to anything that happens in front of me.

Unfortunately due to the way on and offramps are built here in SoCal, cops can easily hide out until right when you pass by them. Actually the other day I was going under an overpass, I saw a guy looking out over the freeway. As I moved in closer, I thought his head seemed abnormally large (what turned out to be a helmet!). As I finally approached about 100-200 meters from him, I realized he was a motorcycle cop, firing his little speed gun right down on the cars in front of him.

They also like hiding out on onramps especially near overpasses. You can't see them because the offramp leads up and it blocks your line of sight on the other side.

Man the CHP are tricky.

 

I'm not saying I'm a speeder all the time, when I'm too tired, I don't speed at all and I stay on right lane to let speeders stay on left lane, its those slow pokes that want to block the left lane and causes other drivers to drive around them. When I speed I stay active, and be on left lane, and when I obey speed limit, thats when I stay on right lane to help facilitate flow of traffic without causing jams in left lane. SLOW drivers and (OLD )PEOPLE in general please stay on the right lane to keep the flow of traffic at max.

 

From what I have seen on crowded highways, it is the fast drivers that cause all ripple or slinky effects. Example: traffic is going ~70 up ahead fast guy runs up going 85 then has to slam on the brakes people behind him see brake light and then everyone slows down then the next group behind slows down etc...

The hyper miler who is looking ahead and never wants to hit the brakes is pacing traffic. What people do not seem to under stand is that going a steady 60 is faster than going 80-25-80 mph.

 

The term coined by Mr. Roadshow (columnist for the Mercury News) for slow drivers in the #1 (left most) lane are "Road Boulders". Many on the local highways here will merge onto the road and move all the way over to the passing (#1) lane and clog the damn thing up. I hate it when I'm cruising along (55 - 60 mph) in the slow (right most) lane and someone comes racing up on my butt, flashing their lights and tailgating me......like its MY fault that I'm not 50 feet behind the bumper of the guy in front of me. And the reason why the don't pass on the left is that the two to three left lanes are filled with tailgaters who won't let this driver over and aren't going any faster than the slow lane anyhow.

As far as your 4 car pile up. Sounds like you had 4 drivers who were following too close for conditions. Period. The first car may not have been paying attention and had to hit her brakes hard (and you aren't in a position to say why this driver did it), but the 4 cars behind her need to leave enough room to be able to stop. What is their excuse for rear ending the car in front of them?

 

And way better for gas mileage, brake wear, engine wear, etc....

 

I've had this happen to me way too many times. Sometimes I get tailgated, flashed, and beeped at when the lanes to my left were OPEN. This is what drives me nuts the most. If they had noticed I am driving much slower than their 75+ and they moved over and moved around me before they got right up my butt they wouldn't have to slow down.

 

In defense of Mark, he drives slow but he is very aware of his surroundings. Like most good hypermilers, he will change tactics to suit current driving conditions which includes speeding up and getting out of the way when it is prudent.

 

I'm ruthless on the speed. Right lane is speed limit. Middle land speed limit plus 5. Left lane speed limit plus 10 as long as you are passing traffic on your right. Over 75, most drivers lack the training and skills to be driving at that speed on a road with traffic especially at night.

 

There is absolutely no one on the road that is paying attention to what is going on around them more than I am. You try doing well over 70 mpg for an entire tank while keeping up with traffic and not pay attention...doesn't work.

Speed kills. There is no way around it. It's math, it's physics. It shouldn't be that hard to understand.

 

Ugg that reminds me. Next fill up I have to switch back to my 17" Fuelly sig.

 

I think I kept it under 80 mph when I was out your way. Definitely when I was looking for that Runza

Mike

 

I actually drove my car today I think my last fill up was a couple months ago.

Mike

 

Sweet! I think of you often when I'm cruising in style now. No I'm not getting side moldings for mine!

 

How 'bout some mud flaps for your off-roadin adventures

Mike

 

So what. In Canberra, most of the roads connecting suburbs to each other are 80km/h or even 90km/h zones. There's even a few 100km/h highways...
Wait, is that mph?!?!

 

On April 14th 2012, I drove 415 miles straight at 80 mph(GPS measured/81 mph as measured by the Prius MFD) at about 65 Fahrenheit degrees in the rain going east bound on I-70 (70 mph speed limit) using a 3rd gen 2010 Toyota Prius running on 10% ethanol 87 octane gas with Yokohama Avid S33D tires set to 38 psi front and 36 psi rear achieved-- on that superhighway day trip, my 2010 Toyota Prius III achieved 44 mpg as calculated at the pump(46 mpg as measured by the Prius MFD) . For most of that superhighway day trip the Prius was set on cruise control(CC); however, on the tank before the 80mph 415 mile/tank, I had set the CC to 70 mph and when there was hilly terrain I sometimes switched the CC off and used a hypermiling technique called Driving with Load (DWL) with the max speed set at 80-75 mph and the bottom speed set at 70-65 mph - this pushed up the MPG to about 47 mpg. You can check my fuelly.com mileage log to get the exact MPG and other details for that day. I've been told that my Prius' tire pressure were a bit low and that it should have been set to 40/38 psi or 42/40 psi for optimum FE. The combination of bad weather and lower tire pressure reduced my Prius' MPG that day. Mark is right - speed kills the MPGs. Over the past few tanks, I've been trying to make up for that April experiment in speed.

My need for speed was because I was driving from a St. Louis funeral on Friday to another Washington DC funeral on Sunday. At least for that day I was on I-70 - those vehicles passing me by on I-70 seem to be consistently pulled over by the state police (?for speeding?). hope this helps