I even stopped on the way home at the Toyota dealer where I bought it to show them (it was at a red light anyway...) since I knew the numbers would be staggering at the end of the trip.
Monday, February 14, 2011
"Oh, yeah!!" -Kool-Aid guy
NICE! Warm weather apparently does wonders. Displayed mileage of 73.3 mpg over 27-mile hilly route.
I even stopped on the way home at the Toyota dealer where I bought it to show them (it was at a red light anyway...) since I knew the numbers would be staggering at the end of the trip.
I even stopped on the way home at the Toyota dealer where I bought it to show them (it was at a red light anyway...) since I knew the numbers would be staggering at the end of the trip.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Fill-up, Sunday, February 13, 2011
406.8 miles
6.920 gallons
$3.179/gallon
58.79 mpg
4.00 L/100km
Wentworth's complete fueling history
So close!
I decided to go to the gas station a day or so early, since I was in the middle of an engine-off glide with some momentum that I didn't want to waste by slowing down to turn down the side street to go home, and the light was green with no traffic. After all, always best to combine short trips into the end of longer ones.
Just a little shy of the magic 60 mpg, which to be honest, surprised me a little given the single trip readings this tank. Yes, the display on the Prius overestimates slightly, but I had thought most of them were sufficiently above or at 60 to make it work. I imagine that the margin of error increases immensely the higher you go with your mileage. If you use .1 gallons of gas over 10 miles, you get 100 mpg. If you calculate wrong and say .11 gallons over 10 miles, you get 91 mpg. When it's a matter of many miles divided by very small, precise fractions of gallons, there's lots of room for error.
There was one day with wet roads that I remember really killed the mileage (I find wet roads are worse than cold), plus the 19°F trip, and a couple other cold trips where I could not get the ICE to shut down in a timely manner.
On the other hand, there were lots of other good ones which I'm pretty proud of!
In any case it was my best tank, and I'm happy with it given the terrain I have to drive in and the winter temperatures.
61.0 mpg this morning to work over 26 miles in 25°F.
Halfway through the trip home today. I just liked the stairstepping action on the screen!
Good ride home today, 66.1 mpg displayed over 27 miles.
6.920 gallons
$3.179/gallon
58.79 mpg
4.00 L/100km
Wentworth's complete fueling history
So close!
I decided to go to the gas station a day or so early, since I was in the middle of an engine-off glide with some momentum that I didn't want to waste by slowing down to turn down the side street to go home, and the light was green with no traffic. After all, always best to combine short trips into the end of longer ones.
Just a little shy of the magic 60 mpg, which to be honest, surprised me a little given the single trip readings this tank. Yes, the display on the Prius overestimates slightly, but I had thought most of them were sufficiently above or at 60 to make it work. I imagine that the margin of error increases immensely the higher you go with your mileage. If you use .1 gallons of gas over 10 miles, you get 100 mpg. If you calculate wrong and say .11 gallons over 10 miles, you get 91 mpg. When it's a matter of many miles divided by very small, precise fractions of gallons, there's lots of room for error.
There was one day with wet roads that I remember really killed the mileage (I find wet roads are worse than cold), plus the 19°F trip, and a couple other cold trips where I could not get the ICE to shut down in a timely manner.
On the other hand, there were lots of other good ones which I'm pretty proud of!
In any case it was my best tank, and I'm happy with it given the terrain I have to drive in and the winter temperatures.
61.0 mpg this morning to work over 26 miles in 25°F.
Halfway through the trip home today. I just liked the stairstepping action on the screen!
Good ride home today, 66.1 mpg displayed over 27 miles.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Wentworth's working hard in the cold
After my post on Monday about short trips and killing kittens, I decided to calculate the potential hit for my own routes. I took mpg samples on my Tuesday and Wednesday obligatory short trips, and was pleasantly surprised. While it's certainly no fun to see each of these trips individually (one of 1.1 miles netted me 30.1 display, ouch!), the fact that I'm apparently able keep the average mileage during all of the week's short trips to about 46.2 displayed mpg (so likely about 44 mpg in real life) means that it won't drag me too far down from 60.
In fact, on a tank spanning two weeks, and thus two Tuesday/Wednesday combos of short trips, I would only have to get slightly above 62 mpg on all my other 433.8 miles to still get about 60 mpg, even with the 46.2 miles of 44 mpg (you can see I'm aiming to fill up about 8 gallons. 433.8 miles + 46.2 miles = 480 miles). On tanks like this week, where I have to drive more than usual, I may only hit Tuesday/Wednesday once on the tank, and I only need a little over 61 mpg on the other 456.9 miles (480 miles - 23.1 miles of Tuesday/Wednesday combo).
This seems like a tall order, and although I've had a couple of 58 or 60 mpgs displayed on the low end, you can see below I've had a good week overall, setting a couple route records, the latest of which was tonight back from work, at 67.7 mpg displayed in 28°F weather. Looking forward to the fillup results anticipated about Monday the 14th!
67.7 mpg over 12 miles
This one was tough, but got 61.9 mpg on the display over 18 miles. Wentworth wouldn't glide for about 12 minutes, it was so cold out - notice the 19°F in the upper right corner of the screen.
68.3 mpg over 27 hilly miles (I'm getting better with warp stealth!)
66.2 mpg over 20 miles
In fact, on a tank spanning two weeks, and thus two Tuesday/Wednesday combos of short trips, I would only have to get slightly above 62 mpg on all my other 433.8 miles to still get about 60 mpg, even with the 46.2 miles of 44 mpg (you can see I'm aiming to fill up about 8 gallons. 433.8 miles + 46.2 miles = 480 miles). On tanks like this week, where I have to drive more than usual, I may only hit Tuesday/Wednesday once on the tank, and I only need a little over 61 mpg on the other 456.9 miles (480 miles - 23.1 miles of Tuesday/Wednesday combo).
This seems like a tall order, and although I've had a couple of 58 or 60 mpgs displayed on the low end, you can see below I've had a good week overall, setting a couple route records, the latest of which was tonight back from work, at 67.7 mpg displayed in 28°F weather. Looking forward to the fillup results anticipated about Monday the 14th!
This one was tough, but got 61.9 mpg on the display over 18 miles. Wentworth wouldn't glide for about 12 minutes, it was so cold out - notice the 19°F in the upper right corner of the screen.
68.3 mpg over 27 hilly miles (I'm getting better with warp stealth!)
66.2 mpg over 20 miles
Monday, February 7, 2011
Everytime you take a short trip, a kitten dies. And you lose a lot of money.
So you love cruising around town. It's quality fun, no doubt, especially in the warmer weather, driving around, radio blasting Billy Joel (or Creed, or Lady Gaga, or Stravinsky - whatever floats your boat). Nothing like jumping around from store to store during the week, going to the gas station to get gas, heading to the grocery store several times a week to pick up a meal for the evening, or driving down the street to drop something off to a friend cause it's quick and easy.
The zooming around town for every little errand is part of the American culture that stemmed from years and years of gas costing less than water (sort of like wine to the French). The thing is, the prices are creeping up once again, slowly but surely, and these habits from the days of sub-dollar gas prices are costing us.
The general rule is this:
Do not take short trips in your car(!).
Cars get their worst possible mileage in the first five to ten minutes of driving. In the winter, this time is prolonged and the mileage becomes atrocious during the warmup phase. To stop for errands, wait until your car is fully warmed up, and then stop for whatever you need on the way home instead of just after leaving the house. Go for broke on those grocery trips, get what you need for a week. Driving your car three miles on a cold engine, especially in winter, will absolutely kill your mileage. Even in my Prius, I know from my house to the grocery store from a cold start gets me about 20 mpg. If you think you're safe with a 25 mpg average EPA rating car, you're probably getting 10-15 mpg during the first few minutes of cold weather (sitting at the stop light is 0 mpg, by the way!).
Let's do some actual calculations. Let's say you can get 30 mpg in your vehicle (very generous, the US average is below this). You expect to go 240 miles between fillups for a grand total of 8 gallons. My most recent gas price of $3.18/gallon would give us $25.44 for a fillup. Let's assume 1,200 miles a month for a total of five fillups in a given month, for a total of $127.20.
Now let's say that you drive a mere 30 out of those 240 miles on short-distance trips - to the grocery store, etc. At 15 mpg your mileage will instantly drop to 26.66 mpg for the entire tank of gas. You've lost over 11.1% of your mileage, and you're paying 12.5% more at the pump. That monthly gas bill jumps to $143.10.
Let's double that amount to 60 miles of short driving per 240 mile fillup. It sounds like a lot, but if you kept track for a week you would find a whole host of surprise short trips that add up. Bank, grocery store, post office, little shopping trip, gas station, dropping off something at someone's place (cause moving a couple thousand pounds of steel is reasonable to transport a piece of paper...go for your e-mail!) - it's easy to do.
With 60 of your 240 miles at 15 mpg, you now drop to 24 mpg, a drop of 20% from your original figure of 30 mpg, and you pay an whopping 25% more! For what other good or service would you pay 25% more than what you need to besides gas? The premium is enormous. You now pay $159 a month instead of the original $127. It's the equivalent of filling up your tank an entire extra time per month!
For the extra you spent, of course, that adds up into $381.60 over the course of the year. Seems better to save it than to spend it for no reason...
So what's the solution? Besides stopping only after the car is warmed up for errands and doing a lot of grocery shopping instead of a little, don't forget that bikes and your own feet get infinite miles per gallon. Walk up the street to the drugstore. Ride your bike to the post office. It's fun, more relaxing than driving, good for you, and costs you and the environment nothing.
The zooming around town for every little errand is part of the American culture that stemmed from years and years of gas costing less than water (sort of like wine to the French). The thing is, the prices are creeping up once again, slowly but surely, and these habits from the days of sub-dollar gas prices are costing us.
The general rule is this:
Do not take short trips in your car(!).
Cars get their worst possible mileage in the first five to ten minutes of driving. In the winter, this time is prolonged and the mileage becomes atrocious during the warmup phase. To stop for errands, wait until your car is fully warmed up, and then stop for whatever you need on the way home instead of just after leaving the house. Go for broke on those grocery trips, get what you need for a week. Driving your car three miles on a cold engine, especially in winter, will absolutely kill your mileage. Even in my Prius, I know from my house to the grocery store from a cold start gets me about 20 mpg. If you think you're safe with a 25 mpg average EPA rating car, you're probably getting 10-15 mpg during the first few minutes of cold weather (sitting at the stop light is 0 mpg, by the way!).
Let's do some actual calculations. Let's say you can get 30 mpg in your vehicle (very generous, the US average is below this). You expect to go 240 miles between fillups for a grand total of 8 gallons. My most recent gas price of $3.18/gallon would give us $25.44 for a fillup. Let's assume 1,200 miles a month for a total of five fillups in a given month, for a total of $127.20.
Now let's say that you drive a mere 30 out of those 240 miles on short-distance trips - to the grocery store, etc. At 15 mpg your mileage will instantly drop to 26.66 mpg for the entire tank of gas. You've lost over 11.1% of your mileage, and you're paying 12.5% more at the pump. That monthly gas bill jumps to $143.10.
Let's double that amount to 60 miles of short driving per 240 mile fillup. It sounds like a lot, but if you kept track for a week you would find a whole host of surprise short trips that add up. Bank, grocery store, post office, little shopping trip, gas station, dropping off something at someone's place (cause moving a couple thousand pounds of steel is reasonable to transport a piece of paper...go for your e-mail!) - it's easy to do.
With 60 of your 240 miles at 15 mpg, you now drop to 24 mpg, a drop of 20% from your original figure of 30 mpg, and you pay an whopping 25% more! For what other good or service would you pay 25% more than what you need to besides gas? The premium is enormous. You now pay $159 a month instead of the original $127. It's the equivalent of filling up your tank an entire extra time per month!
For the extra you spent, of course, that adds up into $381.60 over the course of the year. Seems better to save it than to spend it for no reason...
So what's the solution? Besides stopping only after the car is warmed up for errands and doing a lot of grocery shopping instead of a little, don't forget that bikes and your own feet get infinite miles per gallon. Walk up the street to the drugstore. Ride your bike to the post office. It's fun, more relaxing than driving, good for you, and costs you and the environment nothing.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Solid trip, 65.1 mpg displayed
Solid 27-mile/43-km trip home from work this morning. I got 61.1 mpg or 3.85 L/100km going there in the morning, and 65.1 mpg or 3.61 L/100km on the way back. This is with pretty intense hypermiling attempts (that's right, driving slow can be intense), since the whole landscape is rife with hills, including two bridges that go waaay up (before the lovely backside down). I also had a couple inopportune stops (cut off by a bus just before a stoplight which I otherwise would've gotten through before it turned red - on an uphill), so it's nice to see the good numbers even with those. Those of you with flat commutes, be thankful!
Keep in mind the Prius display is generously inaccurate by a couple mpg, so the likely real life average for the roundtrip was 60 mpg (3.92 L/100km), which is my stretch goal for an entire tank.
Have a good weekend!
Keep in mind the Prius display is generously inaccurate by a couple mpg, so the likely real life average for the roundtrip was 60 mpg (3.92 L/100km), which is my stretch goal for an entire tank.
Have a good weekend!
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Fill-up, Friday, February 4, 2011
376.7 miles
6.788 gallons
$3.179/gallon
55.5 mpg
4.24 L/100km
Wentworth's complete fueling history
This tank was showing some excellent results with most rides in the low to mid 60s. The problem is that just a few bad rides can really knock it down. I had two in particular, and a third to a lesser degree, that were huge mileage droppers due to cold, but in particular moist weather, which seems to have a severe negative effect on the timely shutting down of the ICE (internal combustion engine), which is crucial in the Prius for higher mileage.
In any event, here are some snapshots from this past tank. It's important to note that the display screen can vary from about 2 mpg on average from reality, sometimes more. I always hand calculate at the end, so the 55.5 mpg you see at the top is from the gallons put in and the miles driven, not from the inaccurate display screen. I'm pretty confident that with a stretch of drier weather and temperatures higher than freezing that I'll have a nice crack at a 60mpg/3.92 L/100km tank (ok, 400 miles or so, I don't like to get close to empty :-D) sometime soon, hilly driving be damned!
6.788 gallons
$3.179/gallon
55.5 mpg
4.24 L/100km
Wentworth's complete fueling history
This tank was showing some excellent results with most rides in the low to mid 60s. The problem is that just a few bad rides can really knock it down. I had two in particular, and a third to a lesser degree, that were huge mileage droppers due to cold, but in particular moist weather, which seems to have a severe negative effect on the timely shutting down of the ICE (internal combustion engine), which is crucial in the Prius for higher mileage.
In any event, here are some snapshots from this past tank. It's important to note that the display screen can vary from about 2 mpg on average from reality, sometimes more. I always hand calculate at the end, so the 55.5 mpg you see at the top is from the gallons put in and the miles driven, not from the inaccurate display screen. I'm pretty confident that with a stretch of drier weather and temperatures higher than freezing that I'll have a nice crack at a 60mpg/3.92 L/100km tank (ok, 400 miles or so, I don't like to get close to empty :-D) sometime soon, hilly driving be damned!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
ice + ICE = Math class
Wednesday ended up being another moist, icy, wintry day that necessitated almost constant defroster use, and I knew the ICE (internal combustion engine) would stay on in my first trip of the day, bringing down the mileage. I also have a couple unavoidable short trips for clients, knocking down the mid-50s mpg for a one-way of my main trip to 44.8 mpg or 5.25 L/100km after 15.9 miles/25.6 km.
I knew on the way home, being a night drive on pure ice again, that it would be great to try some hypermiling with few cars on the road.
After I got home, with the return trip tacked on I was back up to 51.6 mpg/4.56 L/100km. This seems disappointing (only 44.8 up to 51.6?!?), but, of course, the drive straight home without detours to clients is shorter at 12.4 miles/20.0 km, and you can't average mpg just like that.
Which brings us to today's math lesson :-)
Here's a convenient formula for calculating mpg for the last segment of driving you've done, like for calculating the way home of a roundtrip drive. Most people need a ScanGauge, but if your car has instaneous mpg like the Prius, try it out. Of course, you can figure it out on your own, but sometimes it's more fun to be lazy and just use whatever you find on the internet!
It supposes a certain amount of information, like that you wrote down the distance traveled and displayed mpg after the first part of your trip. These are represented by distance1 (in miles) and mpg1 in the formula.
You also need total distance traveled in miles and total trip mpg, respresented by distancetotal and mpgtotal in the formula.
Just calculate the second segment of distance, represented by distance2, by subtracting your first leg from the total distance.
Plug it all in...
And I got 64 mpg or 3.68 L/100km on the way home yesterday in freezing temps!
I knew on the way home, being a night drive on pure ice again, that it would be great to try some hypermiling with few cars on the road.
After I got home, with the return trip tacked on I was back up to 51.6 mpg/4.56 L/100km. This seems disappointing (only 44.8 up to 51.6?!?), but, of course, the drive straight home without detours to clients is shorter at 12.4 miles/20.0 km, and you can't average mpg just like that.
Which brings us to today's math lesson :-)
Here's a convenient formula for calculating mpg for the last segment of driving you've done, like for calculating the way home of a roundtrip drive. Most people need a ScanGauge, but if your car has instaneous mpg like the Prius, try it out. Of course, you can figure it out on your own, but sometimes it's more fun to be lazy and just use whatever you find on the internet!
It supposes a certain amount of information, like that you wrote down the distance traveled and displayed mpg after the first part of your trip. These are represented by distance1 (in miles) and mpg1 in the formula.
You also need total distance traveled in miles and total trip mpg, respresented by distancetotal and mpgtotal in the formula.
Just calculate the second segment of distance, represented by distance2, by subtracting your first leg from the total distance.
Plug it all in...
And I got 64 mpg or 3.68 L/100km on the way home yesterday in freezing temps!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
When it rains, it pou...no, it ices over
Yesterday saw a pretty nasty combination of precipitation, clearly designed by Mother Nature for no other reason than sticking it to low gas consumption.
There was snow in the morning, which I dutifully cleared out of the driveway and off my car. But by the time I had to actually drive anywhere in the afternoon, a couple hours of light rain and sleet had (in)conveniently and thickly layered a sheet of ice over everything in sight, poor Wentworth included.
Since I was on the road to a decent two week tank of potentially 60 mpg/3.92 L/100km, I wanted to keep the streak by scraping the ice manually without running the engine. No problem, I do it all the time...
Nope.
The first scrape lifted a fine spray of ice/snow/non-nomerable wintery substance off the window, but there was clearly a solid coat still below that. More scraping seemed equally futile. I eventually found a crack or two to work into, but even then it was the biggest sheet of ice I'd ever scraped on a car.
An hour and a couple cups of warm water to soften the ice later, I was off, wet, cold, and knowing full well that my Prius' ICE (internal combustion engine, not to be confused with the other stuff) does not turn off as often when there's moisture on the roads. Furthermore, the sleet kept freezing on the windshield, so any crazy defroster antics I might normally play to get the best mileage were out the window, and safety was the name of the game. So defroster and ICE running, I drove "like a normal person" through the 20 mph/32 km/h average speed limits and countless stoplights that get me to work.
I arrived with a mere 45 mpg/5.23 L/100km on the display.
This was actually not disappointing, but a couple things else:
There was snow in the morning, which I dutifully cleared out of the driveway and off my car. But by the time I had to actually drive anywhere in the afternoon, a couple hours of light rain and sleet had (in)conveniently and thickly layered a sheet of ice over everything in sight, poor Wentworth included.
Since I was on the road to a decent two week tank of potentially 60 mpg/3.92 L/100km, I wanted to keep the streak by scraping the ice manually without running the engine. No problem, I do it all the time...
Nope.
The first scrape lifted a fine spray of ice/snow/non-nomerable wintery substance off the window, but there was clearly a solid coat still below that. More scraping seemed equally futile. I eventually found a crack or two to work into, but even then it was the biggest sheet of ice I'd ever scraped on a car.
An hour and a couple cups of warm water to soften the ice later, I was off, wet, cold, and knowing full well that my Prius' ICE (internal combustion engine, not to be confused with the other stuff) does not turn off as often when there's moisture on the roads. Furthermore, the sleet kept freezing on the windshield, so any crazy defroster antics I might normally play to get the best mileage were out the window, and safety was the name of the game. So defroster and ICE running, I drove "like a normal person" through the 20 mph/32 km/h average speed limits and countless stoplights that get me to work.
I arrived with a mere 45 mpg/5.23 L/100km on the display.
This was actually not disappointing, but a couple things else:
1. Good! It's hard to remember when you can get in the 50 mpgs/4.7 L/100km without trying, and 60s/3.92 when you try, that 45/5.23 is excellent mileage for almost any other vehicle out there, especially in freezing temperatures.
2. Informative. The extent to which driving habits can affect your mileage (and thus your finances!) was not evident to me until a few months ago when I first tried the Prius. I've squeezed out 65 mpg/3.62 L/100km on this same route before, and getting 45 mpg/5.23 L/100km this time shows me how adjusting my habits, but getting there in the same amount of time yields a 44% improvement in mileage.
One other thing - on the way home, not wanting to spend an hour in the mist/rain/sleet/whatever again, I put on the defroster and started scraping. The car was on for maybe 10 minutes or so, and when I got back in the mileage for the 12 mile/19km trip was down to 36 mpg/6.52 L/100km (from 45/5.23 before)!
You can see, if the ice isn't terribly thick, and running your car in the morning before you actually drive just saves you a couple minutes in the name of convenience, or "warms it up", kick the habit. Modern cars really don't need that to save the engine, and you're getting precisely 0 miles per gallon that entire time (it sounds even worse by saying infinite L/100km!).
I also drove "normally" on the way home, since the roads were pure ice at 23°F/-5°C outside temp, save for a little gliding when I could, for a more respectable but still weather-reduced 55 mpg/5.14 L/100km.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Why do you have to be such a tree-hugging hippy?
There's an assumption going around that if you own a Prius, you a. are a hippy, lusting for the good old mud wrestling days of the 1970s b. are exceedingly gay, or at least have many gay friends and c. voted for Obama.
If you are one of those people that thinks those things, stop it.
The Prius is a mid-size sedan, and gets double the average mileage of other sedans in that class even when you're not attempting to hypermile the bejeebers out of it. The immediate and tangible effect of this is that you will halve your gas spending overnight and see the difference in your bank account at the end of each month.
It's true that if you were looking for a $5,000 used compact car, then yes, you won't recoup the cost of your car in gas anytime soon. But for someone like me, who was looking for something reliably solid that would last awhile and do well on highways or around town, there was already the possibility of getting, for example, a used Nissan Altima. I had driven my sister's recently and absolutely loved how it handled.
That's when I got to thinking - if you're going to pay a sizeable chunk of change anyhow, why not opt for one that will save you money throughout the life of the car? The Prius came to mind immediately, but not with any particular affinity or nostalgia - my family had never owned Toyotas, and I'd never driven one in my life. It just seemed like the more rational path.
So...
My first month with Wentworth I drove 1,271.5 miles at an average 51.25mpg, and this was before I had any real idea how to drive it more efficiently. With gas averaging $3.1069 per gallon that month, I paid $77.08 altogether, versus the $197.51 I would have paid at 20mpg in another vehicle (it's useful to note I used to drive a lot faster, so the 20mpg figure is actually quite generous), for a total savings of $120.43.
Then in January I drove Wentworth 922.6 miles between fillups at 54.43mpg, paying $53.13 at an increased $3.1288 per gallon of gas, versus $144.33 at the conservative 20mpg figure, saving $91.20.
OK, so I've saved at the least $211.63 in gas costs during my first two months of ownership. Seeing the Prius as a political statement doesn't do much for anyone, and in fact does a huge disservice to those who could be driving a hybrid and savings tons, but who never will, because it looks "too gay" (Really? Are we still in middle school?).
Personally, I'm looking forward to saving over $1000 in gas this year.
If you are one of those people that thinks those things, stop it.
The Prius is a mid-size sedan, and gets double the average mileage of other sedans in that class even when you're not attempting to hypermile the bejeebers out of it. The immediate and tangible effect of this is that you will halve your gas spending overnight and see the difference in your bank account at the end of each month.
It's true that if you were looking for a $5,000 used compact car, then yes, you won't recoup the cost of your car in gas anytime soon. But for someone like me, who was looking for something reliably solid that would last awhile and do well on highways or around town, there was already the possibility of getting, for example, a used Nissan Altima. I had driven my sister's recently and absolutely loved how it handled.
That's when I got to thinking - if you're going to pay a sizeable chunk of change anyhow, why not opt for one that will save you money throughout the life of the car? The Prius came to mind immediately, but not with any particular affinity or nostalgia - my family had never owned Toyotas, and I'd never driven one in my life. It just seemed like the more rational path.
So...
My first month with Wentworth I drove 1,271.5 miles at an average 51.25mpg, and this was before I had any real idea how to drive it more efficiently. With gas averaging $3.1069 per gallon that month, I paid $77.08 altogether, versus the $197.51 I would have paid at 20mpg in another vehicle (it's useful to note I used to drive a lot faster, so the 20mpg figure is actually quite generous), for a total savings of $120.43.
Then in January I drove Wentworth 922.6 miles between fillups at 54.43mpg, paying $53.13 at an increased $3.1288 per gallon of gas, versus $144.33 at the conservative 20mpg figure, saving $91.20.
OK, so I've saved at the least $211.63 in gas costs during my first two months of ownership. Seeing the Prius as a political statement doesn't do much for anyone, and in fact does a huge disservice to those who could be driving a hybrid and savings tons, but who never will, because it looks "too gay" (Really? Are we still in middle school?).
Personally, I'm looking forward to saving over $1000 in gas this year.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Welcome
Welcome to Mike with a Prius' blog!
Last month, in December 2010, I bought my first car ever after sharing cars for essentially my whole life with family members. The 2007 Toyota Prius had 34k miles on it, and having been bought and regularly serviced at a nearby dealer, it seemed like a good deal from someone who had traded it in for another new Toyota. Although the goal of this blog will doubtless change with time, my main goal is to hopefully help out someone who stumbles across this site while researching the viability of a Prius or hybrid as a long-term purchase. In the last year or so there has certainly been plenty of pretty wild and sensational publicity for Toyota (and not in a good way), so it seems useful to get some facts from a Prius owner's personal experience.
A second goal (which will hopefully take up a lot more space than articles about repairs!) is to document and teach others ways to get good, better, or even (wait for it...) the best mileage out of their vehicle, hybrid or otherwise. There are incredible resources out there on the internet to this end, but many articles are either oversimplified or, on the other end of the spectrum, too technical for laymen to understand. Since I know little about the inner working of cars, but plan on learning an awful lot, it makes sense to share that information in more accessible but still detailed terms for everyone else out there who's in the position I'm in now.
And naturally, I have a third goal in order to properly cover my bases - which is to talk about whatever else I feel like talking about at the time :-)
Now, there's some very important business to take care of before you start reading - lovely as is the Toyota-assigned name of the car, my Prius, purchased after a fairly dense watching of all the Prison Break episodes on Netflix, has been named Wentworth.
See you soon.
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