Hi there. When I first bought my Prius IV, a full tank of gas showed 540 miles to go. After a while, a fill up showed 530 miles. Now it shows 525 miles. I always fill up at the same gas station. Any ideas why this is happening?
it's an estimate based on your driving history. not an actual number of miles it will go. after all, how can it know how and where you will drive on this tank, you don't always get the same mpg.
Over time you'll learn how the car responds to temperature, driving style, tyre pressures, etc. The CONS[umption] figure displayed on the Hybrid System Indicator can be quite optimistic, mine's out by 6.5%. Don't feel bad if HSI displays 50mpg but you only realise 47mpg when you fill up. Keep track of your fuel use at fuelly.com or similar. You won't know how good or bad your fuel consumption is unless it's written down somewhere. Don't rely on memory All new cars take some distance to loosen up and will burn more fuel and oil for the first 10,000km (6,000 miles) or so. The Distance to Empty (DTE) reading can be very conservative. When you hit 0, you may have quite a lot left in the tank. My previous cars (not Prii) had 6 litre reserves (beep for the first warning) and very accurate DTE displays where 0 meant 0. (I once filled a 66 litre tank with 65.78 litres!) This afternoon my DTE was 20km and I filled the 45 litre tank with 37.34 litres of fuel, meaning I had about 170km to run at that rate. Converted to US units that's a DTE of 12 miles, requiring 9.8gal(US) to fill a 11.8gal(US) tank, meaning 2 gall and 105 miles left. The best piece of advice is to track your fuel consumption. Knowing that helps the rest of the information fit into place.
Don't feel alone, I have the same issue. I bought my car in September 2009 and I remember driving home from the dealer and the miles to go was at 600 miles. After my 1st fill up, it went down to 550, then keept going down again = 525, 500, 480, 470, 450. Now when I go to the gas station and always get fill up, I only get miles to go = 430. Of course I get to drive more then 430 miles. Often I drive over 50 miles on "0" miles to go. So yeah that clock, computer is wrong.
