Thanks for the responses so far.
Scangauge: I already own one to watch the temperature. I had a full grill block at one point just covering the entire lower opening and it was perfect except in the height of summer when I had to remove it due to temperatures rising. I'm thinking of a way to have a choke cable or something allow for opening it so I can choose when its closed and when its open. I never re-installed it after I removed it, but now i'm interested in doing something a bit more permanent.
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I did a quick and dirty AST-2 overlay for you on a found picture of a 2005 Prius, you can see the back half of the Prius is basically ideal.
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I'm not sure why your overlay looks so much better than the one that I did. I figured the Prius angle must be pretty good, and when I did the quick and dirty it did not line up at all....strange.
pulse and glide is not really an option. I value my time on these trips since they are so far away, so driving at 72-74 is really as slow as I want to go. Heck, if they increased the legal speed limit, I'd like to go 80-85 in order to reduce my time on the road for these trips. Even at these speeds I'm getting 43mpg average according to the dash as well as the scangauge. The roads are perfectly flat here in the central valley, so no opportunity for the pulse and glide on the hills either.
Wow, 18%! I'd be ecstatic if I could get anywhere near that improvement with one change. I did not think all the changes would amount to that much. That is quite encouraging. I figured all the changes combined might achieve 15%, now it makes me think 20% is achievable. That would put me over 51mpg at 74mph. (starting at 43)