I think I have solved the mystery of why my Prius gets (got?) so much better gas mileage than Joy’s Prius… The solution to the mystery is not something I’m happy to have figured out (sorry Joy!)
Joy got her Prius a year ago. It was a surprise Christmas gift. She thought she was getting a snow blower. This means she got her Prius when it was COLD… and her first 6 months of driving were in very, very cold weather. (It’s cold here people, I keep saying it and it is TRUE.)
I got my Prius in June. I got it in Florida. The first month I got it, we used the AC a good bit, it’s really WARM in Florida. Then, we got here and it was “cold” to us, so when we used the AC it was on low… or we simply did not use it at all.
Now, here I am just a few miles away from Joy and the weather is frightfully cold. My gas mileage has… tanked.
The Prius does not like cold weather. I believe it’s not just the cold weather, it does not like running the heat on HIGH for the entire time you’re driving. (We tend to do very short trips and the car never really warms up all of the way until we’re back home.)
When I fill up, and then drive the 20 miles home, the gas mileage isn’t bad. I’m getting in the low 50’s. That’s a bit of a difference from the 60mpg I’d been getting on that drive. But, I’m running the heat on low the whole way.
The gas mileage then drops considerably as we drive through the week. Yesterday, as I headed to Great Lakes NEX to fill up, I started at 36.1 mpg. By the time I reached Great Lakes, I was no longer driving with the heat on HIGh and the mileage had gone up to 42.6.
So… based on just a couple of weeks of driving in very cold weather, I can assume that Joy’s low mileage was related to six months of very cold weather driving, with heat that probably ran on high more often than it did on low.
I’m sort of grouchy that I have solved the mystery, ya know?
It’s freaking cold here… and it is going to get colder.
OMG! I think you’ve got something there Sherlock! That makes perfect sense. And of course I was firing up the old heater like nobody’s business the minute I got it last November. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it looks like you really did solve it sweetie…..thanks. Have you got your slippers on? Oh, how are we going to keep you from being a frozen popsicle this winter?
Hmm I think you should find some Canadian Prius drivers and ask them what their mileage is like. Unfortunately I don’t know any.
Got news for ya. It isn’t even cold YET! But it will be…just wait ’til January…
Ah huh .. I should have read this first. My brother was just talking about cold weather gas mileage in the prius. The gas tank has a plastic bladder to keep down fumes that it does not burn. When it is cold the bladder does not fill up fully. So you do not get a full tank of gas. Only fill up when You have been driving for a while and it has time to warm back up.