Fill-up, Wednesday, September 21, 2011

500.8 miles
7.502 gallons
$3.679/gallon

66.76 mpg
3.52 L/100km

Wentworth's complete fueling history

I have pictures of the tank sitting on my camera, but I've just moved and apparently haven't taken the USB cord with me (EDIT: they're here now!). They'll be edited in soon. Interestingly, the Prius MFD actually read 66.8 mpg, which is exactly what I got. First time for everything!

Mid tank, looking good.


End of the tank, little down.


My new life (read: new location and thus commutes) is full of short, mileage killing trips. The tank started out nicely up in the low 70s and slowly declined to 66.8 mpg as I did short trips between clients' houses and cold starts just to go the grocery store. I participate in a food co-op, so multiple people have jobs to do. I can't just go when the car is warmed up and most efficient, I have to wait for a time to open up with someone else's schedule.

I also have a new trip of about 30 miles or so which will happen roughly twice per tank, of 60+ mph speeds over very hilly terrain. After that part of the trip there is some pulse and glide, but the two times I've done it so far I've gotten 60 mpg and 57 mpg, so it's a huge drain on gas.

I'm certainly not complaining. A commercially available vehicle netting 67 mpg in less than ideal fuel economy conditions? Sounds pretty good to me :-) I just need to mentally deal with the fact that 70 mpg is very unlikely to happen these days with the new commutes. First day of autumn today, too, and those lower temps are eating away a little at every trip's mpg...

Seasons are a-changing

First autumnal evening in the high 50°Fs tonight, and an immediate and obvious shift in the opening mileage of my trip, with the magic 157°F mark reached slowly and deliberately over a lengthier distance than the summery usual. Achieved around 66 mpg on a trip where I would get around 70 mpg. Small, but a sign of the seasonal drop to come.

Things I don't like about my Prius

Well, I've owned a 2007 model year for 9 months, here we go:

Actual problems
-Poor visibility when looking over your shoulder on the driver's side.

Kinda sorta problems
-Gas bladder is a pain, but it was rectified in newer model years. It doesn't actually affect anything important, it's more a "first world problem".

Hypermiling problems that would not affect normal people
-Very touchy traction control. Again, mostly irrelevant to actual operation, but when hypermiling it's annoying to lose so much regen just from going over a teeny bump in the road and having the car switch almost entirely to hydraulic braking.
-10 seconds of idling under 6 mph needed to switch to full hybrid operation. Probably the worst from a hypermiling standpoint. This has been fixed on the newer models.


I'll update this, but that's all I can think of.

Fill-up, Thursday, September 8, 2011

520.0 miles
7.748 gallons
3.899/gallon

67.11 mpg
3.50 L/100km

Wentworth's complete fueling history

Surprisingly I got over 67 mpg. I say surprisingly, since I thought the last fill-up was partial, but even if it was, it looks like the summer blend or something is boosting my mileage nicely, since for a couple fill-ups now the actual numbers have been high relative to the Prius display.

This tank also includes some new trips which will become habitual for me, including a weekly several mile jaunt which will probably get me 30 mpg each way (ouch). I have a new 20 mile trip over which I only managed 57 mpg, and that was in warm weather! No way to hypermile around hills other than to find an alternate route, so I'll work on that for this week.

Pictures may or may not be coming, computer was on the fritz, may have lost the data for some time...