Record your Prime and Gas Fill-ups

I agree that any HV benchmarks for mph vs MPG should be without any EV battery charge status.. However, to make sure, I will first run a set with some EV showing after driving around in HV long enough to get the engine warmed up. Then I'll run in EV mode until depleted before running another, identical set showing there is no EV battery charge remaining.

Per the manual and what I've seen around town, the car will attempt to maintain the EV level after the engine warms up when initially setting it into "HV" mode. It will be nice to find out how accurate this shows up. Once the EV charge is depleted, I'll run in HV long enough to bring everything up the operational temperature.

I've got my Scangauge back so I'll us it to monitor the ICE temperature.

Bob Wilson

 

I agree that any HV benchmarks for mph vs MPG should start without any EV battery charge status.. However, to make sure, I will first run a set with some EV showing after driving around in HV long enough to get the engine warmed up. Then I'll run in EV mode until depleted before running another, identical set showing there is no EV battery charge remaining.

Per the manual and what I've seen around town, the car will attempt to maintain the EV level after the engine warms up. It will be nice to find out how accurate this shows up. Once the EV charge is depleted, I'll run in HV long enough to bring everything up the operational temperature.

Bob Wilson

 

mpg without any battery is just a prius without a battery. what would be the point?

 

The control laws allow the engine to be off at speeds above 42-46 mph.

Bob Wilson

 

that's nice, and interesting to compare to other gassers. but it doesn't tell us how effective the new battery tech is.

 

Curious, I find the battery+EV mode not very interesting compared to the tricks to 'tame' the ICE. The ICE like most heat engines, has a narrow power band for high efficiency. Outside of that power range, they become inefficient.

Bob Wilson

 

Going for 1300 miles on 1 tank full if I can.

 

1000 miles on the ODO,
118.0 MPG and
another 135miles to go before fill up.

Bought the car on 2/5 and it's still not empty.

 

agreed, but it would be nice to have an hv mpg meter on board as well. i find it hard to tame a gasser, but hv allows for a lot more possibilities.
could efficient rpm's be a simple chart provided by the mfg?

 

It is called the "operating line" on a BSFC chart and Toyota SAE papers have them. We've seen reposting in PriusChat. But with a deeper traction battery, the Prius Prime (and PiP) have more options to keep the engine in the sweet spot. Addition of the one-way clutch means Toyota 'got serious' and in my hands, this is more than evident.

Now I've been teasing the Godot delivery, Ioniq fan-boys but it looks like Hyundai/Kia figured out about 90% of this trick. The City mileage suggests they need more time with user data to finish tweaking their control laws and there is also a 'parts count' problem versus reliability. Both would explain the delayed, Ioniq USA entry. Still, the Ioniq/Niro is a respectable if sadly delayed and over-hyped, effort.

Bob Wilson

 

@ukr2

Nice idea, and thanks for demonstrating a Google Doc embedded in a forum post. VERY Cool

I wondered if you would like your spreadsheet to show lifetime MPG per owner, so I demonstrate how below with a little SS. The first tab is user data; the second tab is a pivot table that groups the data in the first tab. If you like this, please add to the OP. I'm happy to help make the pivot table.

P.s. If someone knows how to remove the first row of garbage data from the Pivot table, please chime in !

 

I hadn't added my data until today because I just did my first fillup, didn't think to add my vehicle before the first fillup because I thought it was a fillup tracker . Another option that may be useful is a link to a Google Form. This would allow you to set the form specification for what fields are in the form, then you could show the resulting spreadsheet without opening it for edit necessarily. If someone screwed up they could tell you which row needed adjusting but it would make it easier to avoid someone accidentally messing up your sheet.

 

I'm ready for my first fill up. How much gas is still in my tank? It looks like 1/8 tank remains which means I should have about 1.4 gallons remaining (plus a little for reserve?). Or-- according to the mpg readout, at 100 mpg, I should have burned 8.3 gallons, which means 3.2 gallons remains.

I think the answer is closer to 1.4 gallons-- my 2010 was fairly optimistic when it calculated its mpg-- about 5%. From this single data point, it looks like the mpg readout is optimistic on the Prime as well. Does anyone have any experience in what each 1/8 tank really represents?

And thank you, Bob Wilson, for running your car out of gas so we can all learn. I plan on heading to the gas station soon... well before I run out of gas.

 

My Prime Advanced gas gauge was right on the money and linear, unlike my 2012 PIP whose gauge lived on full for a long time then on half-full for a while, then plummeted to empty. When my Prime Advanced gas gauge showed 1/8, it had 1/8 of 11.4 gallons as close as I could figure. Of course, I've only filled it up once, so time will tell. In my car, when the little gasoline warning light just came on, I filled up the car with exactly 10.0xx gallons making it click several times, like I always do in all my cars. So the car apparently had 1.4 gallons left if the owner's manual is to be trusted.

.

 

I decided to fill up my tank before I go on vacation, yeah, I know it's not till May 30th but I don't expect to be using any gas by then.

 

While I wouldn't mind entering data here, I am currently just using Fuelly to enter my data (well that and aCar on my Android device). I think that it may be useful if we had the option to enter our odometer rather than miles since last fillup. I don't record this anymore as most of the tools I use ask for odometer readings. Also there is the fact that I had a really horrible set of MPG tanks while on vacation with the car fully loaded with our travel crap that I would rather forget .

 

total miles so far 7275 miles and 69.5 MPG

 

Time to ratchet up some EV miles from here on in

 

Just got back from the gas station for the first time ever with the Prime.

Almost 1,300 miles (1,275). Would've been more but many of those miles included longer freeway trips (100 miles) with no charging available. Didn't even fill it up, just put in $10. Not too shabby!

At the gas station, I realized I didn't know where the gas release switch was... had to take a second to find it!