Prius (2010-12) Fuel :: Daily Variation In Indicated MPG
Apr 10, 2013
Here is the thing. Sometimes, out of the blue, the indicated MPG for my commuting trip shows too high number, something like mid 60's. Sure enough, next day, I can count for the indicated MPG to go under the average, something like low to mid 50's. The average is high 50's (translated to mid 50's MPG by the gas pump). The difference cannot be explained by ambient temp (not much variation and garaged car) or battery state (I have constant charge with my style of driving) or difference in the traffic (very predictable). I'm puzzled about it. What is striking is the compensation next day after.
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I'm relatively new with my 2011 Prius. I've been averaging about 53.6 mpg, but I feel as if I can do better. I've set 54 mpg as this "magic number" that I'm aspiring to, but if I ever reach that, the number will probably rise to 55 and so on ... (As an aside, if I just set the cruise control while on the commute I'm about to describe, I get the same mileage as I do when I'm working on hypermiling, so I don't know if it's worth the effort with this route).
My daily commute is around 15 miles. About half of this is a hilly and curvy road. The PSL on that portion is 55 mph, and it is a two-lane (one lane in each direction) road. At least one of the hills are so steep that if I DWL, I'll lose between 15 to 20 mph from the bottom to the top; that's with the HSI "pegged" right before the power section of the line. I can maintain speed, or at least lose less, if I go into the power area. Additionally, there are several curves at the bottom of the hills where I must brake down to around 40 mph to safely negotiate the curve.
Finally, it is well-trafficked road as well, so, while observing the speed limit, I may have 10 cars piled up behind me, which makes me nervous.
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Due to a drawbridge/liftbridge opening just in front of me, I was suddenly in a great rush.
So I floored my Prius (really floored it) a few minutes after startup to take the longer route to my daughters school. I noticed a slight sinusoidal variation in power (maybe 5% max?) that was reoccurring with a frequency of about one Hertz.
Sound familiar? Something to do with the voltage dropping on the HV battery, the power drawn from it being throttled back, the voltage recovering, the power being increased, etc???
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I know I am unusual but most days I drive about 3-4 miles. I can get 2-3 days out of a charge. Should I plug in every night or just when needed? Does it use more kWh to plug in every day?
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General misfire when the engine light comes on. This error has been occurring almost daily, sometimes it pins it down to cylinder 3. My wife's nephew who is a mechanic says it could be the sensor, but I have only been getting around 30 mpg though the car seems to run alright. I did go ahead and get the plugs replaced, as I was told it could be a bad plug but the error light still comes on as before and the mileage appears no better. What could this be? I am retired on fixed income and dread the very idea of an expensive diagnostic & repair session with a dealer service. Their solution for about everything wrong has been to replace the gas tank (three times already in the life of the car). Last time that did not fix what was going on with the car..
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While most of the emphasis I've seen on improving fuel economy seems to focus on warming the car up quickly in cool/cold weather, I seem to be experiencing significant mpg drops at the other end of the spectrum.
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I am new to the prius 2010.
I filled up last week and I noticed that as soon as a single cell display in the fuel display part has some empty section like 3/4 fuel(single cell) the next day or after that that whole cell disappears without it showing that single cell as being empty.
Around which fuel cell, when displayed, is it important and recommended to fill up gas again, with one cell remaining or two etc.
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When I go out to do errands around town (I live right in town) I get horrendous gas mileage. Now, I understand gas mileage is high at the beginning of a trip, but for this long and this high and under these circumstances? I'm getting ABOVE 10l/100km when I have 80% charge available (for americans, that's disgustingly high MPG like, pick-up truck high), AND my foot is completely off the gas. Literally, coasting, or braking, and I'm still sucking up gas. What the heck?
Is this just because it takes a certain amount of time for the engine to run no matter what or something? I still don't see any reason for me to be eating up all that gas when my foot isn't even on the gas AND most importantly, I have charge available. Feels pointless for me to use my car for what I use it for 70% of the time, which is for quick errands around town at low speeds. Thought the prius was suppose to be a superstar for this kind of thing.
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So my fuel light started blinking after 480 miles. How much more can I drive it? The display shows 30 miles left before fill up but I read in the manual that when the fuel light starts blinking there is 1.6 gallons left so should that be like 75 miles left. Just wondering. To be on the safe side, I went to fill up.
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I was heading to the gas station with one bar on the fuel gauge. When I got there to fill up I had two bars, same Miles To Empty (45). What would cause that?
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My car is causing a whining noise. Sadly, the whining is coming from me. The whining started when I talked to the dealer about solving a reliably intermittent problem the car has. It went something like this: The dealer: “We are not sure what is causing the problem, but our tests show that the wiring harness is showing a lot of faults. We recommend that you replace the upper and maybe lower wiring harnesses.”
My car has had this reliably intermittent problem for several years, and I have not been able to find an answer on how to remedy the problem, and thereby eliminate my whining. My car is a ’92 Mercedes 400e. It has about 135 thousand miles on the odometer. I’ve had the car for about 13 years.
Here is the reason for my whining: The car is reliable as long as I drive it daily. If I let it sit for more than a day or 2, the car will start right up, and run and idle great for about 15 minutes. After that it starts to sputter a lot at idle and when pulling away from a stop. Sometimes it stalls while at idle or pulling away from a stop. It does this even if I turn off all the electrical things that I can. If I run the tach up to about 1500 rpm, no sputtering…until I come to a stop.
Once the car starts to behave all sputtery, I usually let it rest for about 30 minutes or so, and after that the car starts right up and usually runs fine. If the car sits for longer than 2 days, it takes more trips before it starts to behave again.
I’ve found the easiest way to avoid this problem is to use the car daily. Of course, I don’t drive every day and every time I let it sit for a couple of days it’s back to being meister misfire.
This has been an intermittent problem for several years. I’ve had a complete tune up by the dealer, which actually worked for a couple of months, but the problem came back. Most recently the dealer replaced the rotor caps (it had been about 35 thousand miles since they were last replaced) and again this worked, but only for a few weeks.
The dealer can’t provide an answer. Their latest guess the wiring harnesses - and that’s where my whining noises started.
The car is garaged when not in use, but I’ve found that keeping inside or out does not affect this problem, nor does it being warm or cool, nor does a lot of rain or a little rain (I live in Seattle, where the only thing that changes about rain is the temperature).
What might be causing the car’s cranky behavior, other than the part where the car is over 20 years old?
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I have my 2012 Pruis for 3 month now . I am only getting 40 - 43 MPG max . I drive my car mostly around town.
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I've been driving an 2007 Prius unitl last week, when I upgraded to an 2010 model. I'm very happy with it so far.
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My average mileage down to 36MPG this week. is there something wrong with my car? never really went as far as 50mpg the best I got was 45mpg. my average is 40mpg.
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I just bought a 2010 salvage Prius. I have another 2010 I have been driving for 3 years so I am pretty used to the mileage I can expect under different conditions. When the car is totally warm and I measure the mileage for 15 miles or so I get normal readings of mpg. But with a lot of 2-3 mile trips during the week I am getting about 10 mpg less than usual. I have been too busy to look into it in the last week,
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After 2 fill-ups, I am only getting 41 mpg.
I drive a mixture of mountains, freeways, and streets.
I do use ev and Eco most of the time.
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So over the past view days I have been hearing some sort of light squealing noise coming from my car during my daily commute. At first I though it was wind noise or something stuck in the grill of the bumper. When I looked the car over this morning, I didn't see any plastic or something caught in the grill to be causing the noise. Then I thought maybe its my wheels, brakes, or rotors but found out it wasn't that after hearing the noise stopped at a stop light. I did a few revs and heard slight squeal coming from the engine bay.
So I don't really know what to look for now. The sound is fairly faint, but a high pitch squeal.
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When I first got my GTI this was a problem maybe every could weeks or so. The driver's side auto up/down will randomly stop working almost every day now. I do the reset by holding the button down for 5 seconds when the window is down and then holding it up for 5 seconds when it's up. It then functions as it should and malfunctions a day or so later. I have a VAG-COM, not sure if that can reset something in the module? Not sure if it could also be the switch itself? I COULD go to the dealer but last time they just did the reset procedure and sent me on my way.
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Is the eip race exhaust to loud for daily driving? People have told me that it would be to loud but I like loud. I looked on YouTube for soundclips but I only found two and one was pretty raspy.
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If I shift from D to B at 60 mph, what effect does this have on mpg and rpm?
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I have a question about manually calculating mpg. How exactly can I do that? Is it hard to do it? And compare to the mpg calculated by the car computer, which is more accurate?
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