How the Prius wastes fuel

[EVmetro]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

It never ceases to amaze me how fast people crawl up my tailpipe, sometimes visibly slamming on the brakes before rapidly jerking the wheel to swerve around me. As if you couldn't tell you were closing in on me the last several miles until you were 20 feet off my bumper? Sorry to interrupt your texting. :/

Exactly. The eco driver may not be the one doing something wrong, and there is a never ending supply of drivers who do what you just described. This accurately describes the never ending changes in the kinetic energy of all the cars who are passing the eco driver. The fuel waste is indeed the fault of the guy who can't manage his kinetic energy, but in the case of many eco drivers, much of the blame goes to them as well. The Prius in the left lane with nobody in front of him and 20 cars behind him is introducing resistance in traffic flow that will waste far more fuel than the few drops that the Prius saves. If the Prius driver were to stay right and out of the way so that the rest of the traffic could flow normally. there would be fewer changes of kinetic energy.

[NoD~]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Must be different out there. Most of the Prius' I see are driven like they're stolen.

Yeah, I have yet to see anybody trying to hypermile in a Prius in the Idaho area.

"Why bother? It already gets amazing gas mileage! Better than my big truck!"

I always giggle a bit when I get passed by one.

Originally Posted by EVmetro

Exactly. The eco driver may not be the one doing something wrong, and there is a never ending supply of drivers who do what you just described. This accurately describes the never ending changes in the kinetic energy of all the cars who are passing the eco driver. The fuel waste is indeed the fault of the guy who can't manage his kinetic energy, but in the case of many eco drivers, much of the blame goes to them as well. The Prius in the left lane with nobody in front of him and 20 cars behind him is introducing resistance in traffic flow that will waste far more fuel than the few drops that the Prius saves. If the Prius driver were to stay right and out of the way so that the rest of the traffic could flow normally. there would be fewer changes of kinetic energy.

Ya know what REALLY irks me? When you are in the right lane (or 2nd to right, because of exits) with 4+ lanes on the highway and people would rather come up on you, hit the brakes, wait for you to speed up (and you don't, of course), so after some tailing, they FINALLY go around. The whole time, they could have simply swung into another lane and never moved a foot of the accelerator! I find that people are FAR more wasteful in 3+ lanes than in 2. If I'm on the right going at a turtle's pace, people normally get over a lane and pass, but it's rarely the case with more lanes, no matter what lane you get in.

[Fat Charlie]

Originally Posted by EVmetro

...if you imagine the number of gasoline cars that waste five times more energy slowing down to navigate past the Prius and the speeding back up after they are past, the fuel waste would be incredible. Wherever the Prius is, there is a resistance in traffic flow that wastes the fuel of all the cars that finally get by.

It's not my fault that someone decided to take a swing at Bob Barker. Who won that fight, anyway?

[EVmetro]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

I think people see what they want to see...

Confirmation bias: a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.

This is good stuff. Confirmation bias is what initially directed my attention to the Prius, and confirmation bias is what causes Prius fans to oppose an idea in a thread that attacks the Prius. In my case, my dislike of the Prius and the research that I do anyway that studies the waste of kinetic energy in automobiles is the perfect storm. You are quite right that people see what they want to see, which is why Prius fans will block the science of what I am saying without conceiving the actual resistance in traffic flow phenomenon. I see what I need to see in my kinetic energy waste research, but the traffic flow phenomenon that the Prius introduces is not the main purpose of my kinetic energy research. The main purpose of my research is the development of efficient EVs, but it also makes it really easy to satisfy my confirmation bias about the Prius.

[EVmetro]

Originally Posted by NoD~

Yeah, I have yet to see anybody trying to hypermile in a Prius in the Idaho area.

"Why bother? It already gets amazing gas mileage! Better than my big truck!"

I always giggle a bit when I get passed by one.

Being the EV snob that I am, and since I don't like the Prius, I always joke about them to my family when we are passing a Prius. I call them gross polluting fuel hogs.

Many of the Prius' that I see around here have drivers that don't look engaged with what is going on, and I regularly see the drivers seat pushed as far forward as possible with a driver who is barely in touch with what is going on in front of the car. All too often, the Prius' that I see around here are like random floating bad guys that you have to watch out for in a video game so you don't lose one of your three lives. When I get up beside a Prius and look inside, it is apparent that the radio is turned off, even though I would not be able to tell if it was not. Just the clueless look of the blah looking drivers and the seat all the way up tells me what is going on inside their car. Nothing. I also see Prius' driven like they are stolen, but nowhere near the number of clueless ones.

[acparker]

I would have to say that, in my admittedly limited experience driving through the Sacramento area, driving slow in the fast lane is not an activity limited to prious drivers.

[redpoint5]

People perceive me as being an impediment to traffic in my Prius, but that's only because they only think 20 ft ahead of their bumper. One instance where people get angry at me is an on-ramp to a highway that has 2 lanes that merge into 1. I accelerate slowly up the on-ramp knowing that people will be slamming on their brakes because they don't merge smoothly. Everyone behind me gets angry that I didn't follow everyone ahead in the accelerate -> brake ritual.

Another thing I do in the Prius to preserve the kinetic energy of all the drivers behind me is to drive the average speed in stop and go city traffic. Sometimes an increasing gap forms ahead of me, which annoys some drivers behind me, and other times I'm coasting and closing that gap. Everyone behind me ends up utilizing their brakes less frequently, and we end up arriving at our destination within seconds of when we would have arrived by tailgating.

My useless anecdotal evidence today had a Ford F250 take an eternity to make a right turn, causing a disruption in the flow of traffic. He came to a dead stop before making the turn, even though a stop was not warranted.

The other car doing 35 MPH in a 40 was a Honda Accord.

I will not delude myself into saying this worthless anecdotal evidence is scientifically rigorous research.

[redpoint5]

This thread should be re-titled, how thread posters waste time.

[Frank Lee]

Yes, this thread is disrupting the smooth flow of information to my head.

[Vman455]

Originally Posted by EVmetro

This is good stuff. Confirmation bias is what initially directed my attention to the Prius, and confirmation bias is what causes Prius fans to oppose an idea in a thread that attacks the Prius. In my case, my dislike of the Prius and the research that I do anyway that studies the waste of kinetic energy in automobiles is the perfect storm. You are quite right that people see what they want to see, which is why Prius fans will block the science of what I am saying without conceiving the actual resistance in traffic flow phenomenon. I see what I need to see in my kinetic energy waste research, but the traffic flow phenomenon that the Prius introduces is not the main purpose of my kinetic energy research. The main purpose of my research is the development of efficient EVs, but it also makes it really easy to satisfy my confirmation bias about the Prius.

Whoa! Hold up there, cowboy. The other posters here aren't calling your anecdotal evidence into question because they like the Prius; they're calling your anecdotal evidence into question because it is anecdotal evidence.

Say it with me now: Anecdotal evidence DOES NOT EQUAL statistically-viable sampling.

Again: Anecdotal evidence DOES NOT EQUAL statistically-viable sampling.

You're looking at cars you see in your regular driving, which likely includes many of the same people who also live in your area and travel the same routes regularly. When you remember seeing Priuses holding up traffic "all the time," there's a pretty decent chance you're only seeing the same handful of cars over and over; if you think you aren't, you need to produce some evidence that convincingly demonstrates otherwise. That said, we also don't know anything about how you are recording your encounters with said cars holding up traffic. Are you recording them in some way? Or just relying on your fallible human memory?

To recap, the problems with your argument are:
1) No sampling methodology beyond "whatever cars happen to be travelling the same stretch of road as I am right now." You may see the Prius holding up traffic in front of you and miss ten cars of other makes doing the same thing within a one-mile radius at exactly the same time, or in the spot where you were but ten minutes later.
2) Poor sampling methodology means your sample is not representative of the population as a whole, so any results you get cannot be generalized.
3) We don't know if you have any system for recording the incidences of cars holding up traffic at all, let alone how detailed it is if you do. If you do have a system in place, you should have no trouble answering the question of how many cars you observed driving the speed limit or below on March 7 of this year, how many of them were Priuses, how many cars you observed driving above the speed limit on the same day, and how many of them were Priuses. And without that information, your evidence is meaningless, even completely disregarding the sampling error.

Once more, for old times' sake: Anecdotal evidence DOES NOT EQUAL statistically-viable sampling!