I purchased my Prius on April 27th and took delivery on May 2nd. It had 6 miles on it when I drove it out of the dealership (Westbury Toyota New York). My fuel mileage has been, overall ( for 1141 miles) 42.8MPG. I seems to be going up - 41 for the first 400 miles, 38.9 for the next 240 miles (a lot of sitting in the car, trying to download a phonebook from a Verizon phone) , and 46.7 for the last 507 miles. It looks like outside temps have quite an effect on fuel refills. On the first refill, I ran the fuel down to the last dot on the gauge blinking. It took 9.6 Gal. to top off. Outside air temp was about 55 deg F. On the last refill the tank had just reached the last dot, but since I was on the CT turnpike, I went about another 10 miles and pulled into a service area. The dot had not started blinking. The refill took 10.86 Gal. Outside temp was 82 F. Is the fill capacity of the fuel bladder that variable? Overall, I am extremely pleased with the Prius's fuel performance. I'm not a very conservative driver - the last 500 miles were over a mix of high speed highways with 65mph speed limits and lots of hills on other roads steep enough to have slow truck lanes. I generally drove at around 68 mph, with spurts up to 80 to get around slowpokes. The display finished up at 49.2 for that segment ( Thursday thru Sunday). The car is very comfortable (I had leather seats put in). On good roads it's very quiet. It gets a little bouncy on bumps (narrow tires and high pressures, I guess) It was strange driving for the first few day, since I had been driving Ford Explorers since 1998. I'm probably a little older than most of the folks on this forum. I learned a long time ago that you shouldn't fall in love with cars - they will never love you back. But, so far this one is a "keeper".
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(syclone @ May 29 2006, 06:40 AM) [snapback]262328[/snapback]</div> This time of year it will go up. I suggest you get a shrink on retainer for this fall. I think the best month to get a Prius is February.
not bad for your first time. i just filled my first tank on my 2006. got 53.3 on the computer. might sound good to you, but was averaging 60 mpg under the same conditions with a 2004 that was broken in. my second tank is better so far at 55.1 mpg for first 110 miles, so there is definitely a break-in period that also contributes besides the learning curve for a new driver. i think you will find that the more you drive your Prius, the more you will appreciate what truly fine decision you have made in going hybrid
