Just purchased a 2011 Prius IV with Blizzard Pearl exterior and navigation. Owned a Prius with a plug in system for a short while, but that is not a happy story: http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-phev-plug-in-modifications/74196-problem-jungle-motors.html This time I got just a regular Prius from a Toyota dealer with a new car warranty. Looking forward to enjoying my new toy!
I just tried out something the dealer suggested and loaded a bunch of mp3s onto a 16GB usb flash drive. Plugged it in the usb port and it works just like any mp3 player with random playback which I prefer. So for $18 I got an mp3 player for my car that never needs charging! So far I am enjoying discovering the capabilities of my new car. I am a little concerned that I may not get such great mileage as we live near everything and so make a lot of shorter trips which does not take full advantage of the hybrid system. I have increased the tire pressure to 44/42 and am trying to educate myself about the best way to drive the car. Seems to be a lot of contradictory advice out there
Congrats! I'm a 2nd time Prius owner. First time was not good for me either, but this time around is great. We're getting a lot of 50 F temps now. The ICE will come on when starting cold, no way around that. I've noticed it stays on a little longer since the temps have dropped over 10 F or so. I'm really into the 1 minute consumption gage. Go to the 5 minute screen and hold trip button for several seconds. You will see MPG bar for each minute. The first several minutes are pretty low, like 30 or 40 MPGs. I've been holding on to 53 MPG on the gage, but shorter trips like less than 10 minutes drag into 52, but it recovers as I get home. If driven only a couple miles, then back home, yeah, the mpgs will be low, but Prius' aren't built for that. They like to get out and go far
I am pretty sure my around town mileage will still beat the Subaru Forrester I traded in.....and driving further just to save fuel doesn't quite work either! And we live in Arizona so the engine will not be so cold starting out for most of the year. I will try out the 1 minute screen as you suggest. Edit added: Just took a 18 mile trip to go for a hike and I averaged 67mpg on the display. (I was driving pretty mellowly.) But a few trips a week like that will hopefully help balance out the 2 mile trips to the grocery store.
I looked at a Chevy Volt to do better around town, but the emissions are actually higher for electric miles if you calculate using the average emissions for electricity in the US. And then when you do go on longer trips the Volt does worse in both mileage and emissions. Plus it would have cost much more even with the tax credit which I also may not have enough income this year to have fully used the credit. So I went with the Prius. http://priuschat.com/forums/chevrolet-volt/93350-co2-emissions-using-volt.html The plug-in Prius will still probably not do much better for CO2 emissions when using electricity, but of course will pretty much equal a regular Prius once the plug-in battery is depleted. Maybe if we ever have a house with solar electric, I will add a plug-in system to our car. The good news is we only drive about 10K a year, so that by itself saves a lot of gas and CO2
