Fuel mileage in the toilet now that winter is here

You know that it will go back up when weather gets warmer. I live in Oklahoma and it has gotten cold here only a few days at a time. Mostly 20 to 30 Degrees in morning and warms up in afternoon. So I do not have a consistant cold weather number. It has gotten 30 on the highway with 23 degree temps. Still better than 15 in my old Tundra truck.

 

Try 18 l/100km in the FJ Cruiser! That's 13 MPG US.

 

It's expected when the weather gets cold. Short trips where the engine doesn't fully warm up in the cold will really ruin the mileage. Grill blocking may help. Lot's of threads on that subject.

 

If you can stand it, drop the climate control to 67 F. When my wife adjusts in to into the 70s, my FE tanks.

 

Grill block the lower grill, I gained back some mpg.

 

I live in Minnesota. I have a 2013 with 12,000 mile on it. The worst mileage from Jan - April was 38 mpg for the entire tank, one time. Other than that, low 40's is the norm in winter. Getting 43 mpg on the current tank...

 

Use grill blocking ... Rethink tire pressure ... With my winter snows. 42 front 40 rear
Thanks for the snow from across the lake

 

We slip slided in about 4 inches of snow today and my wife commented that here milage is down about 8 mpg from summer. We have a 2013 with 8k miles on it. Defrosters, heater, snow on the road all hurt mpg.

 

Heater is the main killer of lost.

 

i hate when the lost get killed.

 

but seriously, i think it's the short trips. the ice never warms up. how short are they? i used to get 50-55 on my gen II with a 7 mile one way commute.

 

I get about 32mpg consistently in Chicago because I drive a little over a mile to work. No way can the engine warm up enough, even with almost every electric feature off (including the heat). I'm used to that after 5 winters with the car. That said, I can get 54+ mpg tanks in summer months when I'm on vacation and driving more than 5 minutes at a time. Just the way it is.

 

Keep in mind that mpg is not a linear unit of measurement, so if you drop 20% seasonally in a 25mpg car to 20mpg, you might not think too much about it, but it feels like a bigger deal when your 50mpg drops to 40. Yet the drop to 20mpg will cost you twice as much in actual fuel cost.

 

One trick I use if I can stand it and I have seat heaters on, I shut the heat OFF at stop lights, especially if the ICE hasn't fully warmed up. Once I do that the ICE will shut off. When the light turns green I press AUTO to turn the heat on while the ICE is running. That will help keep your mpg's up during cold weather. Grill block is a must in cold weather too.

 

Short trips, especially in cold weather, will really kill your mileage. The engine never gets warmed up properly. I am not convinced that using the heater has much impact on mileage. The heat is produced by the engine whether it is used to heat the cabin or not. The engine is wasting 50-75,000 btus every hour...using a few thousand to heat the car will not really impact the rest of the system.

 

I believe he was talking about at stoplights. Fan off ICE off, fan on ICE on. I found that 68 is good at lights for about 3min when it's 38 outside. It's good for 1-3 mile gain. Summertime 74 with tinted windows, 100 outside samething. It's the everyday simple stuff that sucks down mpg.

 

My mpg has dropped too with the cold weather and the reformulated winter 10% Ethanol gas..

 

Another Minnesotan here.
Our previous gen II averaged 52mpg in the summer and 42mpg in the winter.
Short trips are definitely a mpg killer in the winter.
The air is also denser and it generally takes more energy to drive through snow than dry pavement.

I have noticed this with all cars, it is just more noticeable in the Prius.
The same difference will take you from 24 miles per gallon to 19 miles per gallon where in the Prius it takes you from 50 to 40.

 

My in town short trips has dropped as low as into the 20's mpg. I just finished a 600 mile highway trip into the wind and in temp in the 20-35 degrees. average speed was 60-70 mph. Fuel economy is indicated in upper 40's. Actual mpg was 45. so no so bad. Short trips REALLL stink. I have a 2013 Prius 4. My summer average was about 51.5 mpg. I have a bit over 7000 miles on my Prius, which I got at the end of July 2013.