I have a Gen II (2008) Prius which averages 40mpg on mostly highway driving between San Francisco and San Jose (100 miles per day). With the PiP I plan to charge it overnight and also at work... so possibly 20-30 miles powered by just battery. I'm hoping for at least 25% improvement over my current Gen II mileage - so 50mpg. Realistic? Conservative?
I'd say realistic. Make use of the ECO button which doesn't exist on our Gen IIs and your mileage may end up being conservative. 100 miles/day huh?
From what I've read, your HV mileage in the PiP should be almost as good as (maybe 1 mpg less than) your 2008 Prius. For your combined mpg, just do the math.
HV mode highway mileage in the PiP is rated higher than the 2012 Prius liftback. Prius liftback is 48 hwy, PiP is 49 hwy as rated by the EPA.
Sounds like you will spend petrol on 80 miles in instead of 100 miles = 20% less distance. 40 mpg / .8 = 50 mpg. I doubt you will get more than 20 miles of pure EV from two charges, since your G2 Prius mpg of 40 is less than EPA, suggesting aggressive driving at either high speeds and/or with braking
Using the new EPA numbers (from Toyota), the average driver with that commute may get 95mpge for 22 miles and 50 mpg for 78 miles, or around 59-60 mpg combined. Sagebrush is right though, if you're not getting EPA now you probably won't see all that, but even a 20% reduction from 60 mpg to 48 means you'll be getting about 20% better mpg than your typical 40.
I do a somewhat similar commute in a 2005. I manage to get between 42 & 44 mpg. In pure HV mode with the PiP, I'm hoping to see at least a ten percent increase in mpg. Adding in the pure EV mode should boost that number even more.
This was the result of my first commute with an early model PHV... ...half of which was on a 70 MPH highway, and there wasn't an EV/HV button available. That's well above the maximum of 60 MPG that I see under the same conditions. So from that particular drive with a 2010, the improvement I saw was 25%. And my 2010 clearly delivers an improvement over my 2004. That means you'll likely see even more. .
The arithmetic requires a harmonic mean. Think GPM, not MPG Since 95 is ~ twice 50, you can estimate the result as: 22x + 78*2x = 178x 95/1.78 = 53
I have the same problem commuting from Pacifica to Concord. Depending on traffic and my mood, I can get anywhere from 44 to 49 mpg on a tank. What really kills the mileage is the stop-and-go traffic. Once the charge is depleted in the battery, the engine has to run to keep up with traffic and recharge the battery. Lots of very short start/stops. What I'm going to try to do is use the EV for the slower parts of the drive like the bridge and the tunnel and stay in HV the rest of the time. If I can get through all the stop-and-go sections in EV, that should make a sizable difference in the overall mileage.
So can one determine in PIP when they want to be in EV mode and when in Hybrid? I would think if that indeed is true then using EV in city or slower traffic and hybrid on highway makes totally sense.
Yes, indeed, there is an EV button! That offers great flexibility to the driver in choosing when best to use the stored charge.
