First Trip Report

My wife and I took our 2010 (Pkg 3 with JBL) on it's first extended trip. We drove from Portland, OR to the Redwood forest (near Orick, Ca). Our car had about 2,200 miles on it before starting this trip. We left Sunday afternoon and returned Monday night (various time constraints required a rapid trip).

Here are a few notes:

- The seats are not super comfortable -- I experienced some lower back pain after extended hours in the car. They're not nearly the worst I have sat in, but they could definitely use some lower back support. I might try the rolled up towel trick next time.

- Satellite reception is pretty pathetic. Any trees near the side of the road will result in static. I find this probably the most disappointing revelation of all -- the killer feature of XM/Sirius is long road trips away from cities. If anyone out there has found a way to improve reception, I'd love to hear about it.

- The car handles great in the rain, even with the 15" factory tires. We saw a great deal of very heavy rain and wind on the way back.

- Got 53.2mpg on the way down, and 50.1mpg on the way back -- proving once and for all that driving North takes more energy since it is uphill In all seriousness, the weather was awful all the way back, and I attribute that to the higher fuel consumption.

We drove a total of about 780 miles on about a tank and a third of gas -- our old Saturn wagon would have consumed at least three 13 gallon tanks for that trip

Overall it was a lot of fun to drive. I wasn't super intense about hypermiling things, and still managed to get numbers I was pleased with.

Cheers,
Ron

 

Note I said "at least THREE 13 gallon tanks". Which is at least 39 gallons, as opposed to the maybe 13-15 I used in the Prius.