Help! My 2014 Prius v only 30 to 37 mpg

And as I and others have already stated here before................
IF you feel that you MUST keep up with the flow of traffic AND that is 70 or more, then your gas mileage will suffer a LOT and there isn't much that can be done to change that.
The same applies to city driving where a lot of stop and go is involved.

There is no magic. Your particular driving style and conditions dictates what mileage you will get.

Did I suggest before that you take a test trip at lower speeds ??

Also, "new" cars sometimes come with abused 12 V batteries. At the first sign of anything unusual electrically.....that is warning lights that come and go......or the car refuses to start but then runs fine later......get to the dealer for a new battery. Their "standard" test won't always fail when the battery is going bad.

 

Aren't you due for an oil change? I'll confess to having had 2 by your mileage but I'm paranoid and old school and like to flush the system early in case of any manufacturing "dust" got in there. So I did mine at 1k and 5k and with synthetic oil.

You are also due for a tire rotation, aren't you?

Set the car in ECO mode and leave it there. It will go to PWR if you have to/want to mash the accelerator. ECO deadens the accelerator response and tends to have you not varying the amount of gas as much.

Tires having to push water out of the way to get to the road costs you mileage. Ditto snow. I lose maybe 2 MPG in the rain pushing those puddles out of the way, especially on worn roads with 2 tire wear groves in them.

The v is a bigger car than the hatchback or c and thus has to push against more air and when it is blowing in the wrong direction you get less MPG.

I see the difference between your MPG and mine as being caused by normal variations in conditions, tire pressure and speed. I did one high speed run getting my wife to a hospital and not giving a darn about mileage and it showed the next time I filled up.

And when the temperatures drops from 70 to 20, you lose a lot of tire air pressure so, if you started out at the dealer's "comfort" setting, you have lost pressure due to normal loss over 6k miles, lost due to temperature change and weren't set for the most economical in the first place. I think I got 1 or 2 more MPG more when I raised the tire pressure.

Watch your tire's wear. You can't assume the car was aligned right from the factory and the dealer probably never checked it.

Ask your gas station when they switched to gas reformulated for winter. It has less "energy" in it than summer gas so you lose MPG there. See how a whole year averages out. I notice a 1 or 2 MPG drop.

 

As far as I know you won't get mileage as good as you're getting under these conditions with any other vehicle that spacious.
A conventional Prius hatchback would probably give you around 40 - 42 mpg but is a smaller car inside.

Someone suggested a diesel. You might get slightly higher highway mpg in a VW TDI Golf/Jetta/Passat but none of them are are big as what you're driving, they'd do much worse in the city driving and with the price differential this time of year the fuel would still cost you more.

 

all the best!

 

MPG is a good way to evaluate range but lousy for comparing fuel consumption.
Turn it upside down for fuel consumption--use gallons/100 miles.

23 mpg Sienna = 4.35 gallons/100 miles
32 mpg Prius v (actual) = 3.13 gallons/100 miles
40 mpg Prius v (goal) = 2.50 gallons/100 miles.

 

Not at 80 MPH in the cold. The Prius is extremely sensitive to small changes in drag and driving style, more so than any other car. Most of your problem is driving style, some of it is low pressure in the tires. Take the time to learn some basics about driving a hybrid for max MPG, its not such a big effort. But having done some research you should also be aware that hybrids are made for city driving and that's where you see high MPG. On the freeway its mainly just another 4-banger wagon, and a heavy one at that.

 

I.e. even at 32 mpg, Mpointer is still getting 2/3rds of the intended fuel savings, even in windy winter conditions. And has done much better on other trips, probably in better weather, getting 85% to 93% of her intended savings.

I'm suspecting that after winter, with better weather and a good tire pressure setting, she will be getting nearly all the intended savings.

 

Your expectations are unrealistic. But join the crowd. A really LOT of new hybrid owners fall into the same category.

Weather alone won't make a 10 MPG difference but all of the things mentioned TAKEN TOGETHER certainly can; cold temps, winter gas, low tire pressure, driving in the rain or snow and driving at high speeds all absolutely will give a big hit to your mileage. There is noting that your dealer can do about any of that. And you can not trust them with tire pressure unless you specify what pressure to use. 40 seems to be very common. I use recommendation +4 which is a bit less.......but I'm not obsessed with mileage either.

It appear that you have been seeing what we are telling you but not really buying all of it.
It is all true; honestly, really.

You need to take that test trip. Are you listening at all here ??

 

And it doesn't, at least initially, for a LOT of new owners.

About 10 of us are trying to tell you why that IS but it just doesn't seem to be sinking IN.
I don't know what else we can do.

 

My advice is don't panic. You are seeing the worst mileage out of the v that you will see over the whole year, the summer should bring the average up significantly. All vehicles suffer at low temps and high speeds. If the high speeds are non-negotiable, then you would be taking a similar hit (percent fuel consumption / fuel cost) on any vehicle. The temperature effect would also be similar, but feels particularly painful as you've only seen winter driving so far in the v.

To get a sense of the impacts of each of these effects, here are two sources to consider:

1) On average a compact non-hybrid car (gas or diesel) operating at constant highway speed in warm weather drops from about 50mpg to about 38mpg when increasing speed from 55mph up to 75mph based on this test data from motortrend:


2) In this EPA test cycle data from Argonne National labs, the effect of dropping temperature from 72F to 20F on highway cycle mpg is:
Jetta TDI: 52.4 -> 43.6 mpg
Prius PHV (discharged battery): 67.9 -> 55.4 mpg
Argonne TTRDC - D3 (Downloadable Dynamometer Database)

So basically you are taking two hits (winter temps and speed) that can each easily account for roughly 10mpgs of mileage penalty. So if you add ~20mpg to what you are getting now, you'll have a rough idea of what the v could do in summer at 55mph. Adding ~10mpg should tell you about what you'll get at 75mph in summer. Hopefully that will be mid 40s to average your mid 30s into the 40mpg average over the whole year you were hoping for.

As mentioned elsewhere there are other factors that come in (tire choice, tire pressure, weather, maintenance, etc) but I'm guessing these are the two things dominating your mpgs at the moment.

Best of luck,
Rob

 

How far from home is the dealer? If more than a couple miles, then the tires warmed somewhat from use and raised the pressure a bit. The 35 psi minimum is for morning cold, before the car drives a significant distance. If the dealer sets them to 35 while already warm, then they will be a little bit low tomorrow morning after cooling off overnight.

Higher pressure will make the ride a bit rougher or harsher. 'Ideal' pressure is a compromise between competing factors (lower is more comfortable, higher produces better mpg and tread life, people disagree on pressure effects on foul weather traction), and only you (and family) can select what is best for your wants and needs.

Do you have a pressure gauge at home to do your own tire checks in the morning? This is fairly important for people wanting the best mpg and tire life. Can you check oil level yourself? This is fairly important for people wanting the best engine life. The low wage techs at the shop don't have the same skin in the game as you do, and don't see the car frequently enough to keep it in proper shape.

 

FYI the city mileage also take a similar hit on all vehicles in the cold. From the same ANL data the Jetta TDI Urban cold start numbers go from 31.1 mpg at 72F to 25.9mpg at 20F. Less mpg drop, but about the same percent wise.

Rob

 

When I see cold weather here, my average MPG can easily fall 10MPG, especially on short trips and high speed trips. My best ever tank average was 53.5, (in June), worst ever tank average was 41.5, (in January). Both on very similar driving around town, same tires and same pressure.
I also noted that for the 1st 6-8000 miles, the car never did very well. I imagine that a new Prius in winter could easily fail to impress.

 

if your seeing low 30's mpg around town in 40 and 50 degree weather, somethings wrong.

 

Another comment:

Was that 2WD, not 4WD? (And fueleconomy.gov shows only a 3.3L engine, not 3.0.)

That Sienna was originally labeled as 26 MPG highway, but downrated to 24 on the modern EPA scale.

Because you were getting less than EPA on the Sienna on this high speed route, you should also expect less than EPA on your Prius 'v'. By simple proportions, 21-23 on a car rated 24 would translate to 35-38 on a car rated 40. (Though real life results are more complex than that.) But you have already achieved some trips at 36-38 on this Prius, so there is nothing to complain about on those days.

As for the 31-33 MPG trip, it is winter, and you admit it was 'fairly windy'. Both of these hurt, and any rain or wet roads would have hurt more. From my foul weather experience in both a Prius (liftback) and several non-hybrids, that drop seems reasonable. It just wasn't as blatantly visible on older cars without MPG displays. I would not be concerned unless it didn't rise back to 38-ish numbers when warm, dry, calm spring conditions return.

But there is room to do better, even without slowing down, if you are willing to study up on fuel efficient driving or hypermiling.

 

.....Not if your jack rabbiting from every traffic light and stop sign keeping the ICE running hard, and screeching to a halt never giving the regen a chance to do its thing, also heater at 74 doesn't help...

Oh and add to above the under inflated tires, etc.


And FYI the speed limit represents the maximum allowed speed, does not mean you must go that speed. Like we have all been saying, if you MUST speed then at least slow down a little say to 65, instead of 75 (60 is best but seems out of the question)..... Most importantly stay in the far right lane, you probably won't piss anyone off way over there. you will see an improvement by simply slowing down...