[steve05ram360]

Some of you may recall the bet I had with the co-worker on the truck mpg... chatting with him day to day during the bet got his attention on mpg improvements and he since started watching his Prius mpg on the dash monitor. Today he tells me he stumbled onto something that has both of us scratching the head...

Ambient temps in the mid 40's, his monitor tells him he's getting 42~43 mpg on the way to work. Consistently, temps around here are pretty consistent with the variation only being 5~8* during the day, most days.

So the other day temps dipped a tad bit more and he had frost on his windshield. So he cranked on the defroster on high temp. By the time he got to work, he was in the 47~48 mpg range. Catching his attention he then started cranking on the heater on high before he leaves home to see how repeatable it is. And it appears to be repeatable according to him. I told him to fill up the tank, then do an A-B-A test with his findings to see it it tracks what he saw.

Anyone heard of this?

Is he running on batteries longer which is driving up the mpg #'s?


I joked with him saying "so I go to all these lengths to drive up my intake temps and do additional various things to drive up mpg and all you have to do is turn on the heater..." his neighbors started lol...