Prius has terrible mileage for first 10 minutes?

[Weather Spotter]

did i miss it but a grill block is a big help with warm up. pair it with a block heater and I halved my warm up time. with how I drive (manual hybread mode, aka pulse and glide) I had my grill 100% closed all summer on trips shorter then 25 miles.

[kurzer]

Originally Posted by P-hack

How much does a block heater help?

1h preheating equals 1min ICE runtime. with german pirce for elctrizity, a preheat time of some 20-30 minutes, is a zero sum.

[serialk11r]

Non hybrid cars that don't have engine stop features also see a similar large drop in fuel economy in the first 5-10 minutes. Sure the idle consumption is higher when the idle is fast, but even in gear and moving along, the fuel economy is worse, at least on my car it is. I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with engine oil being cold and thick, causing a lot of drag.

[Xringer]

I've noticed our C gets rotten MPG for the first 1/3 mile.. Then we hit the long downhill part..

The winter season fuel mix, ethanol+H2O? is bringing down our MPGs..

Now that I think of it, when I leave home with the Ford Escape, my MPGs
is really rotten for a few miles. It takes 5 or 6 miles of driving before I see 22 to 25 MPG on the SG2..

[ps2fixer]

Since the temps hit below freezing here, I'm lucky to see a 40mpg trip with my corolla, most of the time it is low 30s to mid on shorter trips, and upper 30s on my trip to work. Crazy how much this winter is effecting my mpg, never seems to have been such a huge effect before O.o.

[NeilBlanchard]

ALL cars with IC engines have terrible mileage in the first 10 minutes; especially in cold weather.

[Xringer]

If the ICE comes on right away, the first 10 seconds are horrible beyond belief!
Backing out of the driveway is not as bad, but it's still only about 8 MPG!!

Sadly, the Ford is even worse! It stays under 8 MPG for 30 or 40 seconds!

[kurzer]

what about backing into the driveway? with the engine warm it is e-time...

[Xringer]

Humm, let me see.. The Prius C has 2311 miles on it.. We've had it for ~200 days (6.5 mo).
11.6 miles per day at 51.8 MPG isn't really all that expensive.
(about 44.6 gallons is 6.86 gallons per month. That's less than a dollar a day).

I think we'll skip a plug-in heater on the Prius. It's just too much trouble for to little gain..
I'm forced to plug a charger (for battery maintenance) into my Ford, and it's a PITB.

Since we use the Ford so little, it's actually using less fuel than the C..
My guess: Ford fuel cost is less than 30 cents per day.
Makes me wonder how much grid power that charger is using.?.
I'll have to check into using solar on that..

[niky]

Finally got a week's driving in a C. It's astounding what short trips can do.

My daughter goes to school just one and a half miles away. Unfortunately, it's across two national roads with heavy traffic and no place to walk or bike. So I have to drive her and fifteen pounds of book and bag over there.

Average economy is a measly 25-28 mpg. If I drive on a warm engine, flex my eco-muscles and get more aggressive on regen and EV use at both ends of the trip, I can just eke out 35 mpg. Best I can manage in a gasoline car on that route is around 23.5 mpg cold and 30 mpg warmed up. But that's a one-liter microcar. Our CR-V gets a nasty 13 mpg on e same route!

But on trips two to five miles long, 37+ mpg is easy. And once on the highway, I can build up enough charge to average 60-65 mpg, depending on city traffic at the end of my 10 mile highway trip.

But man, are these batteries small. After a few minutes of gas-only driving, the controller stops charging and starts recirculating power. The only way to get it to charge a little more is to use aggressive regen. After that, just five to six minutes in stop-and-go with the AC on drains them flat.

That said, kind of impressed that I was able to get over two miles out of EV mode. Useless as it is, overall.