[Fisher]

My first message concerning the 2005 Prius.
I was wondering what kind of milage prius oweners are acheaving. I have driven my Prius for 4,000 miles and have only achieve 500 miles on 10 gallons one time. I have found that at 38 miles per hour I can run on just the batteries if they are charged, speeking of charged I've never achieve full charge. I live in Florida and you would think that the flat land would be ideal for the Prius but, when I do go out in the contry the down hill coasting seams to win out over the uphill driving.

What no spell checker

 

[Tideland Prius]

You know, my best tank was slightly over 500 miles and that was a few days ago. You'll never see 8 bars if you're on flat land. Also, 8 bars isn't full charge, it's only ~80% of the true SOC. I'm currently at 52mpg.

 

[DanMan32]

Highway driving brings me to 48-50MPG, driving on 19 in Tampa Bay (Spring Hill to Largo) gives me upper 50's, sometimes 60's.

Although driving solely on electric power can help sometimes, more often it will actually reduce your mileage if forced. After all, you have to recoup that energy you took from the battery somehow. You have two ways to recoup it: regen braking, and charging using ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) power. You'll probably notice that the instantaneous MPG is a bit lower when the battery SOC (State of Charge) is below 6 as the ICE tries to use some of its power to charge the battery.

At stop and crawl, it is better for the MPG if it used electric, as it is inefficient to move the car at ICE near idle, and even stoping and starting the ICE adds to inefficiency, though the HSD design minimizes that. So, if it can defer using ICE for a more efficient time, it will. However, the Prius is not a time machine and can't predict what conditions will occur in the near future. Soon the battery will go down to 2 bars, in which ICE has to be used at near idle when you are not moving or moving slow to recharge the battery a bit.

As Tideland said, and I'll elaborate, you usually won't see a full charge on the SOC, and that's normal. This is for 2 reasons:
1. the ECUs try to reserve bars 7&8 for brake regen buffering. If the ICE maintained 100% charge all the time, where would the braking energy go?
2. Battery life. The more constant the battery SOC is kept, the longer the battery will last. The ECUs will adhere to an absolute range of 40%-80% charge, where bar 0 is 40%, and bar 8 is 80%. Within the 8 bars, the ECUs will try and keep it at 6 bars.

 

[Astrowoman]

Come out to So Cal and drive up and down the Grapevine (I5 N out of the LA area) and you will see your Prius do all sorts of things it wouldn't in FL! I grew up in FL, so I have some basis to compare.... Floridians seem to do a bit better in the mileage game; my commute, with car now broken in (which got me about 3 MPG over what I was initially getting) nets me somewhere between 46 and 47 MPG with a downhill 16 miles to work and uphill 16 miles home, about 2/3 on freeway > 70 mph.

 

[Hep]

My first message concerning the 2005 Prius.
I was wondering what kind of milage prius oweners are acheaving. I have driven my Prius for 4,000 miles and have only achieve 500 miles on 10 gallons one time. I have found that at 38 miles per hour I can run on just the batteries if they are charged, speeking of charged I've never achieve full charge. I live in Florida and you would think that the flat land would be ideal for the Prius but, when I do go out in the contry the down hill coasting seams to win out over the uphill driving.

What no spell checker

Your speed will have a huge influence on your numbers. When I am able to drive between 55 and 63 I get in the 50+ MPG. When I drive 70 I drop to 45 MPG. I also am doing much better this summer (15K) than last summer when the car was new.

 

[Logan01]

I live in Alabama, in a small town. That's about the same mileage I get. Rural driving and really short trips only get 35 - 45 mpg, but on a long trip I've seen 55 mpg, averages around 52. Mileage for that first 5 - 10 minutes really bites before everything is totally up to temp.

8000 miles on my '05 silver Prius.