Just got back from picking up pizza and soda, Im sick and eating junk food. It's a tad over freezing and me Prius averaged 37mpg on the trip. I'm guessing this car doesn't shine on short trips in the cold. It has a thermos it pumps warm coolant Into it for a fast warm-up at start, but I'm wondering how long it stays warm for.
Not that you won't find help here, but you really ought to join priuschat.com
The folks there really know your car inside and out.
I doubt any car shines in these conditions, but cold definitely affects electric vehicles substantially. My Leaf has particularly poor range in winter.
Yea. Should check with Prius chat!
It's been daily highs of less that 40 degrees (often less than 32) for weeks.
My Prius is getting 39ish mpg. The ac/heater needs to run a lot which causes the engine to run near all the time.
I think it is just the way it is in cold temps but I have no concern of driving small trips. Just drive the car and it seems to self adapt to the needs.
JohnRW1621 wrote: It's been daily highs of less that 40 degrees (often less than 32) for weeks. My Prius is getting 39ish mpg. The ac/heater needs to run a lot which causes the engine to run near all the time. I think it is just the way it is in cold temps but I have no concern of driving small trips. Just drive the car and it seems to self adapt to the needs.
Gotcha, fellow green Prius owner fist bump. I put on OEM mudflaps for the winter. I just drove the Prius 14 hours straight home. Wasn't a bad trip. I averaged 47mpg on the computer about 3/4 of the way into the trip which I was happy about. The last leg of the trip I was getting sicker and it was 1am so I decided to go 90mph and get home faster. Car is pretty comfortable. I just did that trip 4 weeks ago in my Volvo 240 and the seats hold up well to the Volvo seats which says a lot to me!
I think I'm mindful in the drop in mpg because when I first got the car it was 77* in Florida and all my trips were 8miles plus and I was averaging 48mpg on computer. Now that I have it here and it's cold and I'm driving it how I normally do I'm down to 37-39ish. Which makes sense.
I'm running General Artic Max tires (which are likely not built for mpg.)
Additionally, most of my driving is at 45 mph or higher consisting of country two lane roads and hyw. I'm probably not the ideal hybrid profile. Actually probably more favorable to a diesel driver profile but I have no complaints about 39ish combined mpg.
I too find the car comfortable. I am especially enjoying the deafening silence while stopped and I find the car to be less noisy than other econo cars at hyw speed.
I have been watching rpm through Torque App. It amazes me how low the rpms remain. It's rare to get into the 3k range of the tach, ever.
Previous to the Prius I dd'd a '00 Focus zetec 2.0L with an auto and in similar cycles, 25 mpg combined was typical.
Im happy with the improvement.
My Fiesta 1.6 auto is averaging those figures in the cold upstate NY.
No, not the 25.
Coldsnap wrote: Just got back from picking up pizza and soda, Im sick and eating junk food. It's a tad over freezing and me Prius averaged 37mpg on the trip. I'm guessing this car doesn't shine on short trips in the cold. It has a thermos it pumps warm coolant Into it for a fast warm-up at start, but I'm wondering how long it stays warm for.
Two weeks.
Now, bear in mind, it only holds a quart or two of coolant. So say three pints of 200F coolant in an ice cold engine, it's going to cool off very quickly while heating the engine up only a little bit.
Knurled wrote:Coldsnap wrote: Just got back from picking up pizza and soda, Im sick and eating junk food. It's a tad over freezing and me Prius averaged 37mpg on the trip. I'm guessing this car doesn't shine on short trips in the cold. It has a thermos it pumps warm coolant Into it for a fast warm-up at start, but I'm wondering how long it stays warm for.Two weeks. Now, bear in mind, it only holds a quart or two of coolant. So say three pints of 200F coolant in an ice cold engine, it's going to cool off very quickly while heating the engine up only a little bit.
Oh wow. Good to know. Does the thermos have its own pump? Mine is alarmingly loud after turning off car and exiting.
Two weeks ?! What is that bugger lined with, uranium ?
They're not frighteningly expensive for the hell of it.
The "two weeks" figure is what I was told in training, caveat is that I was not told "two weeks to hold it at operating temp" or "two weeks until it's down to ambient". I'm guessing that it's somewhere in between.
Coldsnap wrote: Mine is alarmingly loud after turning off car and exiting.
Oh, how I have noticed the same thing.
Here is a car that can be near silent while "on".
Once you actually power it "off" is when it can be it's loudest.
Ha. Quite the contradiction.
bastomatic wrote: I doubt any car shines in these conditions
This.
Short trips really effect the Prius big time. Once the engine comes on, it will run until it reaches operating temp. If you are traveling at in-town speeds, the car is effectively behaving like a traditional car and thus the poor mileage. The best case scenario in my experience is to have your first 5 minutes in the car traveling as quickly as possible or under as high a load as possible. The first mile of my commute is mostly coasting downhill, which was very frustrating with a Gen1 Prius. Since it always starts when you turn the key and runs until warmup, I had to waste a ton of gas to essentially move 20 feet out of the driveway. If I could've kept it in elec. only until I exited the neighborhood, mileage would've improved greatly.
I used to take my wife's Prius periodically and the first bar on the rolling MPG display was always like 2/3 the height of the rest. If parked outside in the winter here, the second bar would be shorter as well. Once it warms up, its still easy to get 55mpg+ out of it in town with some careful driving.
Anyway, short trips at 37mpg >>> long trips at 45mpg
JohnRW1621 wrote:Coldsnap wrote: Mine is alarmingly loud after turning off car and exiting.Oh, how I have noticed the same thing. Here is a car that can be near silent while "on". Once you actually power it "off" is when it can be it's loudest. Ha. Quite the contradiction.
Right haha. Girlfriends first comment after driving in it and walking away "it sure is a loud car parked". Reminds me of my crown Victoria compressor pumping up the suspension.
Sounds like these cars may benefit a lot from a block heater. And maybe some cardboard in front of the radiator.
Between cold weather and studded snows, SWMBO's 09 Prius suffers a pretty big hit in the winter. It's something like 8 mpg worse on the highway and a little less than that overall compared to summer. All cars suffer in the winter, but a hybrid suffers worse due to the extra engine-on time for cabin heat, and even if the percentage penalty were the same, it's just more obvious on a car that gets better mpg.
In contrast, my Jeep and the E38 get slightly worse mpg overall in the winter (with the E38 suffering slightly more), but on a long highway run, even with snow tires, both turn in almost the same mpg as they do in the summer.
In reply to Coldsnap :
prius are designed for short trips. electric motor works best in stop/go traffic
sister picked up an 07 prius Saturday (with Nokian snows)
with me driving it like a civic si =37mpg
with me driving it like a prius =53-57mpg according to the indash display. cool cars.
Just finished an actual repair (as in, something actually legit broke, finally) on my old 07 Prius which my father in law has now driven to 327k miles. I replaced the ABS hydraulic unit which is basically the 'entire brakes' unit on a Prius because it gets all the power in 'power brakes' from using the ABS pump motor constantly (no vacuum or hydraulic assist). It gradually wore out until it would run noisily, not make pressure, and blow the pump motor fuses. Already fixed.
Like someone already mentioned, differences in mpg are way more noticeable on a car that gets great mpg. I always said my Insight got better MPG hauling ass than other cars got by hypermiling, and that's basically the same with the Prius, minus just a few numbers. I've never seen less than 35mpg avg no matter how i drove it even with its decade-plus-old battery pack, and it is still normally 40+, down from 48 avg when i got it at 217k.
I mean sure, you can talk about the 10+ mpg difference of using it in various different ways, but since it's a Prius I consider one of the car's main perks is that you get in it and drive it however you want with absolutely no concern for the mpg result and just be fairly confident that it falls somewhere between good and excellent. Same thing with reliability. Floor it all over the place and let it tach out all the way to its zingy 4800 rpm max and drain the battery down to its rock bottom allowable state of charge of 30% (gasp) and see if you can burn it out faster than the sun..good luck. It's very unlikely to break and very unlikely to give poor mpg so turn off all your mechanical empathy and just drive it like you stole it until you contrive some other excuse to be done with it.
Vigo (Forum Supporter) said: until you contrive some other excuse to be done with it.
I think I came up with about 10 of those the first time I drove SWMBO's 09 Prius. In so many ways it's an almost-good car that manages to still be terrible unless you live in a traffic filled city with low driving speeds.
It definitely takes the motor a hot minute to warm up, and that affects the mpg. My wife's is a plug in so we have an extra huge battery but when we turn it on the electric motor will still usually turn on and idle high for a bit until it's warmed up. Even in 40-50 degree weather it'll do that, and it does affect the gas mileage. Once it's warmed up, ours tends to stay at 47mpg no matter what we do.
What you must keep in mind when getting poor mpg in a prius is that you would be getting awful mpg in anything else doing the same trip. Short trips are bad but you can use a block heater and tape off most of the grill if you have real winter ie below freezing everyday.
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