I Am Renting A Prius!!need Some Quick Tips For Hypermiling!thanks

[dsq]

Ive been trying to rent a small car for 2 weeks now and they have been 'out of stock' since gas went nuts!
Well finally they had something in stock- a prius!!!Hallelujah!!!
Anyway i have never driven a hybrid and would like to have a few pointers if possible.
I will total about 800miles over 3 days going up to mammoth mtn area and the ancient bristlecone forest.The freeway(395) is at an incline the whole way up.So cruising on the return should see some really good mpg.
At freeway speeds i shouldnt p/g right?
There will be some twisty mtn hill climbs where speeds wont exceed 30-40 mph so i can pg there.

[ebacherville]

watch the screen it has a nice display that shows where power is comming from.. tyr for as much battery as you can get .. or look at the MPG display etc.... P&G will give you the best mpg for the most part no matter what car ..

[Lazarus]

Originally Posted by ebacherville

watch the screen it has a nice display that shows where power is comming from.. tyr for as much battery as you can get .. or look at the MPG display etc.... P&G will give you the best mpg for the most part no matter what car ..

No for a Prius don't run the battery down(50% SOC is good). It's not an electric car. You will find a sweet spot where the engine is off and you are coasting. They don't do well FE wise above 40 mph so if you can plan routes that let you pulse and glide below 40 you'll do great. There is another thread that was on the same subject do a search and you can find it. There is an excellent article on it at cleanmpg that the other thread refrences.

[brickinthewind]

I tried renting a Prius for a trip I am going on around Philadelphia (niece is getting married) but for the life of me I couldn't find one that wasn't a ZipCar-type membership. Ended up renting a Hyundai Accent - smallest, best mpg rental I could find. Maybe I'll post my results with an automatic rental accent!

[ankit]

Do post your results. Other members have done so with their rental car trips and some have been quite interesting. Too bad you couldn't get your hands on a Prius though.

For example: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...-mpg-2187.html

[brickinthewind]

dsg,
I will post results! What company did you end up renting through? What's the rate if you don't mind my asking? I was under the impression many fleets had trouble getting their hands on them because they are in such high demand for private customers. Not so for domestic midsize sedans which are the standard rental car.

[fshagan]

I have had a Prius since Feb. 06. On 395, set the cruise control at 70 and you'll get about 45 MPG. Set it at 55, and you'll get over 50 mpg. Expect about 49 at 65 MPH.

On the display screen, you'll see one or two buttons in the lower corners. One screen shows a bar graph of your performance in 5 minute increments and a gauge of sorts showing your current MPG. That's the screen I use most of the time to provide the "bio feedback" that really helps in trying to get mileage.

For instance, there are plenty of times I max out the MPG scale traveling 37 MPH on level ground with just slight pressure on the accelerator. I have traveled over 5 miles in this mode. If you remove your foot entirely from the accelerator, the car will go into "regen" mode and it will slow slightly, just like a regular ICE car does. So a slight pressure on the gas pedal going down a slight grade is sometimes better than no pressure at all.

The other screen is a fancy animated graphic that shows if power is coming from the ICE or battery, or flowing from the electric motor to the battery. There is also a digital readout of the MPG you have at that point, but it isn't dampened, so you get "25, 26, 40, 23, 35, 42," readings ... very hard to keep it consistent and use it for feedback. I prefer the other screen now, although I do admit I liked the nice animation at first.

Electric only mode is under about 18 MPH ... a very slow start and you can get it past 20 MPH. If you jam on the gas pedal, both gas and electric motors come into play to give you much more acceleration than you get in most other small cars. "Pulse and glide" is a technique hypermilers do where they take advantage of the "cruise on electric at 37 MPH" trick I mentioned above. They quickly get up to 35 MPH and then, with just slight pressure on the pedal, coast along with some electric assist for miles.

All the other things are the same ... coasting (with slight pressure on the gas) will net better mileage than constantly accelerating.

[dsq]

I just got back.Did about 680 miles round trip and paid 61.00 in gas at a cost of 4.63 a gallon.
Rented from avis who told me all the rental places are selling them back to dealers who can make big bucks off them.
I didnt use cruise control.There are extremely long climbs of up to 10miles.
The altitude was avg 3000ft-10000ft.I went from freeways 405-14-395.I went as far as mammoth mtn.I think the gas gage was off as sometimes i could get as much as 77miles on one bar and as few as 20miles???I guess my avg was high 40s.I never went above 60 and averaged 45-55.On downhills i would cruise in neutral.I thought i would get a little higher mileage to be honest but still very excellent mpg.Cant beleive people driving suv's at 70mph.Are these people billionaires?

[fshagan]

Originally Posted by dsq

I just got back.Did about 680 miles round trip and paid 61.00 in gas at a cost of 4.63 a gallon.
Rented from avis who told me all the rental places are selling them back to dealers who can make big bucks off them.
I didnt use cruise control.There are extremely long climbs of up to 10miles.
The altitude was avg 3000ft-10000ft.I went from freeways 405-14-395.I went as far as mammoth mtn.I think the gas gage was off as sometimes i could get as much as 77miles on one bar and as few as 20miles???I guess my avg was high 40s.I never went above 60 and averaged 45-55.On downhills i would cruise in neutral.I thought i would get a little higher mileage to be honest but still very excellent mpg.Cant beleive people driving suv's at 70mph.Are these people billionaires?

Taking your numbers, $61 in gas at 4.63 a gallon is 12.96 gallons of gas. If you drove 680 miles, you got 52.47 MPG over the trip. Driving down the mountain probably made up for those long uphill climbs! You did very well, even though "cruising in neutral" may have hurt you (all depends on if the computer could have used those "cruising moments" to regen the batteries).

The gas guage "blips" are a mystery to me also; I hate running out of gas, so I never have pushed the issue. I did drive home from work on "one" blip (45 miles), so I know I have at least a gallon left when I get to that blip. The tank only holds 10 gallons, so there are more "blips" on the display than gallons in the tank. I wouldn't be surprised if a "blip" at the full end of the gauge represents less gas than a "blip" at the lower end.

Did you enjoy driving the car?

[dsq]

yes, you're right it was excellent mileage i am still tired from the great trip i spent in mammoth area so i didnt realize i did over 50mpg.I was thinking maybe i could get something near 70-100mpg like some of the guys here do-my hats off to them,those guys are amazing,how do they do it???

I thought the car was excellent.The blinddpot created by the rear window pillars is a little disconcerting and the seats felt like an american cars-no support.Usually japanese cars have amazing seats.Anyway these are very small issues.I love its miserly mileage and it looks cool too.

Redrock canyon is about an 8 mile climb-went down it at about 70-75 in neutral.
Part of the 14 near the 5 interstate has a 10 mile climb-went down it at about 70-75 in neutral.
Rock creek road was the steepest and was a 10 mile climb from 7000ft to 10000ft elevation.I did this twice.
Sherwin grade about 6 mile climb but 6-8% grade-i hit 85 mph going down this in neutral before i realized how fast i was going.
I went up all of these steep long climbs at about 35-45mph.I know i pissed off a lot of drivers
!I have never been able to figure out how to climb hills without losing momentum and speed-do you just put the pedal to the metal?