Low Prius C MPG reading, please help!!

I have to agree with this wholeheartedly! You will go much farther at a higher mpg if you use the ICE to get up to speed and use the EV to maintain when gliding is not possible. It takes much less energy to maintain your speed with EV than accelerate using it. I am shocked at how far I can go using mostly EV for maintaining speed.

I have a regular Prius and have been getting 63 mpg lately back and forth to work. If I get caught in a traffic crawl, I get even better mileage.

One thing I noticed yesterday was that when I was going up a moderate grade that I couldn't hold 60 mph in Eco, I switched to Power mode and was able to maintain 50 mpg on the instantaneous mpg meter. Once I got to the crest of the hill, I would accelerate a little and go back to the Eco mode.

On highways I try to accelerate to about 68 and back off to about the "O" in ECO. Get about a second behind a bigger vehicle and watch your 1 min chart increase by 15- 20 mpg.

 

Wheter faster or slower, isn't same amout of air removed out of the way?
But the drag force is incrased exponentially (v**2) faster you go.

 

For the same distance travelled, the same amount of air is removed but work required to move a car is based on the force multiplied by the time the force is applied. So the work required to move the Prius c forward is based on how fast the air has to be removed over time - which exponentially increases over the velocity as you pointed out. For further review, one might want to study the following webpage:


How to use the road load equation [wiki talk page] - Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - EcoModder.com

hope this helps

Walter Lee
aka "HyperDrive1" on Cleanmpg.com

 

If you are thinking of Newton, work (energy) = Force*Distance, not Force*Time.
Force*Time, however, is equal to momentum change. That is Newton's second law (with terms rearranged.)


Think bumper cars. You have a gauntlet of them in front of you. The faster you are travelling, the harder you bump each one as you go through. The bump is the transfer of momentum from your car to the other. That quantity is conserved.