I probably should have reset the trip for going to town and back, but it does seem to be slightly better mpg in the first 5 mins driving it on the engine when cold at least. Seems like I'm averaging around 45mpg with the 55mph driving.
I used the neutral costing a lot more, it didn't seem to effect the mpg too much, I did always put back in drive to slow down if I overshot the speed for the corner. Target was to coast to it around 25-30mph. With my corolla, it seemed like it coasted just as good as this car when I put it in neutral. There's a few marker points I'd coast at 45mph and hit the corner speed perfect. The prius might have slowed down a little less but I don't think it's a massive difference. Clearly have a lot to learn yet since I want to hit 50+ mpg with this car.
There is some front end damage on the passenger side, the plastic down there is messed up. I zip tied it up to make it a bit better, but I'm thinking a lower grill block might be in order, similar to my corolla had (upper + 1/2 lower for summer, 80% lower blocked for winter). The other factor is the rear strut spring is broken, so the rear end sits much lower than normal, maybe it's too low and is throwing the areo profile off.
Looking at quite a few ecomodder Prius cars 2004-2009 range, it looks like around 47-55mpg is the main range people are getting with a fairly unmodified car. Clearly the car's reported mpg isn't going to be perfect, but it seems to be pretty accurate for most people.
Anyway, I suspect lower grill block and fix up the belly pan and I'll see some reasonable increases. Fix the rear strut, and getting the engine running as best as it can with some fresh new full synthetic oil and it might be a bit happier. It's nice beating my Corolla's mpg while going 55mph while I had to do 45mph with the Corolla. I also tried out a Matrix and wasn't impressed at all, 30-33mpg with an unmodified car across a few tanks. I didn't hyper mile too much in it, but I tried a little. That car performing so bad is basically why I thought about trying a Prius. Basically wanted a good mpg vehicle with a hatch. Yaris was another car on my radar.
For my trip I made, probably should mention that was mostly with the heat off, no ac, no radio. It was raining both ways, 45F both ways and with headlights on both ways. I had to turn ac on a couple times to keep the windows cleared.
Just read an interesting post linked below. The person suggests using the battery as much as possible at the end of the trip, the concept is when the engine is cold started, it's charging the battery up for a quicker warm up and such. They claim 60+mpg averages. Kind of funny, there's so many little things that can be done differently, but the MPG effect is so small on these. Back when I was driving my corolla, first trip with it was only 33mpg, bad alignment, blown struts, pre-tuneup, junk rear tires, etc. Deleting the passenger mirror, belly pan, and grill blocks and I saw 20%+ gains.
https://electricvehicleforums.com/fo...tml#post135465