17mpg on my prius

There are many factors that affect consumption.

Fuel quality, duration and frequency of trips, driving style, serviceability of all systems in the car.

For more precise control, you should purchase some device that will read the parameters of your car's operation for further analysis.

You can install the program on your phone for free. Hybrid Assistant can be a good fit for this.

Hybrid Assistant

 

You only drove 10 miles. You are not going to get economy starting from cold and only driving 10 miles. Make longer trips, and don't reset the average consumption after every trip, only after every refill (filling the tank from empty to full) is enough.

 

Could be anything. It would help if you gave us what diagnostic steps you've already taken. I know some usual suspects are stuck brakes, dirty MAF, clogged injectors, dragging undertray, bad battery, etc.

 

do a couple tanks and calculate at the pump

 

In 10 miles and 30 minutes our Prius has usually warmed up fully and is averaging over 40 mpg around town and close to 50 mpg on the highway. However, it will be substantially lower if the trip consists mostly of very short jaunts and then the car idles for 5-10 minutes at a time with me in it while the wife runs into one store or another. Going up hills, or even long shallow grades, also causes a huge hit. (Although typically made up when the vehicle descends again.) Running the A/C will also lower mpg a lot at low speeds, less so at sustained higher speeds. Since the screen shot shows 88F it seems likely that the A/C is on.

All that said, do check the engine's air filter, and after driving for a sustained 15 minutes at 30 mph or more, stop and feel all the wheels to see if any are substantially hotter than the others (dragging brake or really bad bearing).

This model car is not a rocket at the best of times. However, when the high voltage battery is on the way out it can become distinctly sluggish, which may be what you are describing as "struggling to cope". How old is the high voltage battery? The pack can degrade pretty substantially without throwing any codes. If you see the state of charge indicator collapsing frequently (from many bars to few bars, then terrible acceleration while it charges back up) that is a sign that it needs a new pack, or at least a pack reconditioning. If you can get a paid copy of Dr. Prius and a compatible OBD2 adapter there is a test which gives an estimate of the state of the pack.

 

... here, in California, it's the gasoline. We get awful fuel consumption. Worst MPG in the nation, we pay more than anyone, for it.

Here in California, our gasoline is specifically formulated to get the car through smog check. Try to spike the tank, we risk the car failing, at smog check. Fresh catalytic converter, impeccably maintained gen II, 204k on the odometer, 14k on a professionally rebuilt engine, driving like a grandma, I'm having a time of it seeing 40 mpg, across level ground.

Outside California, I'm into the mid-to-high 40s. Crossing the state line, gassing up outside California, I see a 7 to 12 mpg improvement, substantial increase in cruising range. Once back in California, I'm back down, in the 32 to 37 MPG range.

Always shortchanged, here in California, we're getting boned! Not with anything here in California do we ever get what we're paying for. My supercharged AW11, once a 25 mpg vehicle, I'm getting just 8 to 12 mpg on summer blend -


Samuel, '04 Ruthiemobile

 

I'm burning the same gas and our 2007 is usually around 43 mpg in mostly city driving within a broad flattish valley. It gets around 50 mpg on the highway, again, with the same gas. Elevation changes of a couple of hundred feet are common on a trip of more than 5 miles. The only way our car would have mpg as low as asjoseph cites would be if we only made very short trips, or it developed a mechanical issue. That the mpg goes up when going out of state, which would likely result in longer drives, suggests that short trips might be the issue.

Californians do get screwed on the price of the gas though, with the extra being state taxes plus some crass supply manipulation by the oil companies. One refinery will go off line for planned maintenance and another will always mysteriously have some sort of unplanned outage. Prices jump very rapidly and then return to the lower values only very slowly. This is usually when they change the gasoline mix seasonally.

Most of the population lives in areas surrounded by high hills or even mountains. Without heroic efforts at pollution control we would be back in the bad old days when I couldn't see the mile high mountains just a couple of miles away, and a short run made a person feel like they had COPD. I recall flying into Burbank on heavy smog days and it was almost like landing twice, first on transitioning from clear air to filthy air, at which point visibility would suddenly drop from 20 miles to less than 1 mile, and then secondly when actually touching down.

 

... fuel contamination issue can't be confined, to just Ohio:

Push on again to test Ohio gasoline for quality | Just The News

If our policy community wanted us getting superb mpg, we'd be getting superb mpg. We're not. Because the policy community has a pecuniary incentive, we don't? We're getting boned.

I'm seeing significantly diminished fuel efficiency, across every vehicle I own. Unless I venture out-of-state, I never see 40 mpg on my '04 hybrid, anymore. Everything else I have, well under 20 mpg.

Once a solid 25 mpg vehicle, my 2300 pound supercharged AW11, I'm down into single digits -


Samuel, '04 Ruthiemobile -


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