Has anyone taken their Prius on a 1000 mile or longer trip?

Bring plenty of water and refreshments for yourself and your family, your digital camera, clothes, etc etc etc,

enjoy the car, it's a TOYOTA!!!!

on a more serious note, pump up the tires to 42/40 psi, make sure the spare is properly inflated, do NOT wait until the last PIP on your fuel gauge to fill up, try to learn pulse, glide and warp stealth.........

we want photos! have a safe journey.

:flame:

 

we go on a 2500 mi r/t drive 1-2 times per year. the car is fine even after we've driven it for 20something hours straight (two of us in shifts). all standard road tripping advice applies. have fun!

 

Works fine. What more can I say?

Tom

 

Not to jack this thread, but would 4 people in a Prius weighing 240,260,240,180 plus luggage for a weekend be too much for it to handle?

 

I take mine on a 1000 mile round trip several times a year, never a problem.

 

Yea one big thing to NOTE... ya'll might have to stop for restrooms and food a lot more than the Prius will for gas

I bought mine in Ca and drove it back to Tx... we had to make more stops than the car... that was sweet... but coming back at under 60 mph made the trip longer... but you must break it in correctly...

enjoy the ride... and the car... I sure do..

 

I drove mine when it was just a week old to Minnesota and back, 2800 miles round-trip, in late December/early January. It's cold between Montana and Minnesota in January, in case you were wondering. The car wasn't completely broken in, only had 200 miles on the odo when I started out, and I drove stretches at 70-75mph on I-90/I-94, dealt with vicious headwinds, cold, about 500 miles of snow-packed roads and blizzard conditions, and averaged 41.9mpg for the entire trip. Not too shabby if you ask me, plus the car was very comfortable and fun-to-drive. I can't wait for my next one, going back to Minneapolis (my son lives there) in July and again in September and will drive the Prius both times.....I'm hoping that with warmer weather/better conditions my mileage will be better.

 

Not sure I understand?? It is a car - as capable as most, and more capable than others. You're expecting it to just be an in-town runabout?

And yes, I have taken mine on 1000+ mile trips. That's the only reason I need to burn gasoline, in fact.

 

Getting an '08 very soon & will be taking it on a 7000+ mile trip all over the US & Canada.

I can't wait!

Here's my pics from 2 road trips I took last summer:

Myspace.com Blogs - summer ’07 pics =] - /\/\ MySpace Blog

1st one was in an Olds Alero & the western one was in a rented Toyota Camry.

I loved the Camry btw. I was looking into the Camry Hybrid, but the Prius seems like a more logical choice for my needs.

 

It will ride a bit lower, but should do OK. Of course, put a 1000 lbs of people in any car and it will handle differently than with just a single driver.

 

check the manual for maximum weight capacity...

 

I put about 3,000 miles on my Prius with a trip to Florida last fall. My one suggestion would be to get some kind of a lumbar cushion. The Prius seat is OK for an hour or two at a time, but the lower-back support is rather lacking. I bought one before the trip and am glad I did.

 

My longest trips so far have only been about 300 miles one way, but here's my $0.02 --

I generally get better gas mileage on the long highway trips than I do in day-to-day driving, since I have such a short commute with frequent stop signs and stoplights. I generally average about 50 mpg for the highway trips, and it's pretty consistent regardless of weather. I do a little better in sunny, warm conditions than in the cold of winter (cold here being in the 30s and 40s), but the difference is not that much compared to summertime.

I've been very happy with the car's acceleration when merging onto highways. There are some reststops in Maryland and that require you to merge into the left lane of I-95 with a speed limit of 65 mph (so actual speeds are closer to 80) and I've never felt like I couldn't get up to speed fast enough. Also when driving on the parkways around NYC the on-ramps are insanely short so you have to be able to accelerate up to at least 60 mph in a heartbeat, and again I've never felt it was a problem in the Prius.

One thing I was glad to read here on Priuschat before my first road trip -- the engine revs loudly when you accelerate quickly. It's perfectly normal but I might have worried that something was wrong if I hadn't known to expect it.

Related to comfort over time - I have cloth seats which are generally fine but after a couple of hours of driving if I'm wearing shorts I find the fabric gets scratchy. So I put a folded towel on the seat in warm weather and that solves the problem (and protects the seat if you're greased up with sunscreen).

Based on where you are planning to travel, since I'm not familiar with the availability of gas stations on the highways of Wyoming and South Dakota, I recommend reading up on the gas tank/bladder (search for threads on the "guess gauge"). You might find it best to stop for gas when you've got 2 or 3 pips showing on the gas gauge rather than waiting until you're down to 1 pip if you're passing through sparsely populated areas and the gas stations are few and far between.

Otherwise, I'd say just enjoy the ride. You will have fun comparing your gas consumption to what you would have used in your old car.

 

Max capacity is shown as 800 pounds. It should be OK if you don't bottom it out and give yourself extra distance to accelerate and brake.

Geez, Americans *are* getting bigger, aren't they.

 

Over 3,200K miles round trip one time (normally it's 2,500 miles round trip) going from So Cal to N.W. Montana ... via highway 1, then along the Columbia river, eastboud. No more or less wear & tear from frazzeled nerves in the Prius, than the SUV we unloaded for the Prius. If you're going to be as far north as Wyoming (presumably Yellowstone?) you'd do yourself a disservice if you didn't drive a few hundred more miles north, to visit Glacier National Park. In not too many more years, the Glacier will be gone ... regardless of why it's so much warmer.

 

Oh yeah, crank it up to speed, cruise control engaged and sit back enjoying the view.
Around town I average 4.3L/100km on the highway at 110km/h I average 5.2L/100km and I'm not shy of accelerating to over 140km/h to pass a truck or road train. Much better than the 7-8L/100km I got from my 2 litre Camry.

I best be off, leaving this morning for a trip to Ayres Rock and Alice Springs. Seeya in a fortnight!!

 

We took our 2005 on a 10,000 mile trip across North America Sept/Oct 2006 in our Prius via US and Canada then return to Vancouver Island, BC. Not a single problem - kept up to all the other traffic up and down mountains, Interstate Hwys, etc. Just make sure you have a complete check of the vehicle before taking off. No problems getting serviced at Toyota departments for oil changes. In fact we are taking a similar trip this May/June in our relatively new 2008 to Nova Scotia.
Gary

 

In March I took a trip from Cincinnati, OH to San Fransisco, Los Angeles and back. Here is the link to the writeup.