Prius MPG Review 28-Feb-2012

It has been at the back of my mind since creating this blog to try and record the MPG and related statistics from my Prius. I haven't got long just now so will just include some stats in table format.

	DAY	28
	MONTH	Feb
	Year	2012
	MPG	50.1
	Temp Range (°C)	8 – 13
	Tyre Pressure (psi)	41 psi
	Roof Bars Fitted	Yes
	Roof Box Fitted	No
	Driving Conditions	Mostly urban, 100 miles of extra-urban

I'll no doubt review the format of this table in the future but will try and post approximately every week.  At some point I'll include a histogram type of chart to plot MPG by calendar month.  That's it for now.

Of Long Weekends in Crieff and Prius Cycle Carriers

We had a lovely long weekend break last weekend, staying in a self catering lodge at the excellent Crieff Hydro hotel in Perthshire. If you are ever planning a break in this beautiful part of Perthshire, especially if you have children, then I thoroughly recommend it. There are something like 60 different activities you can do as part of your stay but the big attractor for us is the 6 free hours of childcare in their Big Country kids club ... which means we grown-ups get to play!  Hurray!


Whilst we made full use of the spa facilities we also enjoyed the woods, hills and countryside right on the hotel's doorstep. For us, as a family, this means taking our mountain bikes with us - 4 altogether. Now, you may be wondering how we get 4 people plus all our luggage plus food supplies (we went self catering after all) and 4 bikes into the Prius. Well, we have a tow ball mounted bike carrier. Hang on, I hear you say. A tow ball on a Prius? Yes, actually, that's right. How so, you ask? Well, I fitted a towing bar from www.priuscarrier.com and it has worked very well indeed.  I'll write about this piece of equipment in another post sometime soon, hopefully, since it really is an interesting item for prospective or current Prius owners.


In the meantime, I thought it might be useful to show some photos of our Prius with the bikes fully loaded onto the bike carrier.  Here is a back view.

And here is another rear view from a slightly different angle.  You can see our Thule roof bars too (though we didn't use our roof box at all for this trip).

The bike carrier that we fitted onto the tow ball is another Thule product. We chose a Thule tow bar-mounted 'hang-on' cycle carrier - model no. 9708. We ended up getting a good deal on Amazon.  You can get a better view of it mounted on the tow ball in the photo below. With the bikes fitted onto the bike carrier I can open the tailgate enough to get bags out of the boot. Without the bikes on the carrier but the carrier still in place on the tow ball I can fully open the tailgate, which is a great advantage.

You can see a close-up of the Thule 9708 cycle carrier (without bikes) in place and mounted on the tow ball in the photo below.

And lastly, a photo giving  a better view of the tow ball / tow bar. Pity I didn't clean the Prius first!  Ah well, I am blessed with after thoughts.

Well, that's all I wanted to post for now.  I hope you found all this information on carrying bikes with your Prius and that, yes, you can do it with a tow ball-mounted system on a car like the Prius.  

Word of caution: never ever tow a trailer or any other wheeled vehicle with a hybrid car like the Prius - it will cook the battery.  My tow ball is only as a mount for cycle carriers and luggage racks.

Hypermiling the Prius in Hilly Areas

Just had a thought whilst driving on my usual school runs yesterday; how do others manage hypermiling with their Prius in areas where there are many hills?  I live on the north Fife, on the south bank of the River Tay, and there are frequent hills on my usual routes.  Great if you are going down hill but not so great when going up.  This all makes it a tad difficult when trying to hypermile.  Does anyone have any tips or advice?  Be glad to hear from you.

KJFWWRK7PYPA

Fitting Thule Roof Bars to a Toyota Prius

I mentioned that I had fitted Thule roof bars to my Toyota Prius in my last post.  It occurred to me that some people might be interested in how these fit onto a gutterless roof like that on the Prius.  Whilst I didn't take a video when fitting the roof bars onto my car, I did see a good video from Tow Equipe posted on You Tube.  I've included it below so that you can see for yourself how relatively simple a job it is.  Before starting to fit such roof bars you need to ensure the roof surface is clean and polished, which isn't specifically shown on the video.  Note also that the demonstration car in the video isn't a Prius but since they are both gutterless cars this is of no significance for demonstration purposes.

I'm really happy with the Thule roof bar system we fitted. I had previously bought a Mont Blanc alternative product but had to return it as not fit for purpose on my Prius.  All this was despite extensive checks of the online literature, even Mont Blanc's own documentation, to affirm that the product we bought was suitable for our Prius.  One phone call to their customer centre later and it transpired that was in fact incorrect.  Having handled both Mont Blanc and Thule products, read their documentation, fitted and used the products I can safely say that the Thule system is by far the better in terms of ease of use and end product quality. They are a bit more expensive but, in my opinion, well worth the extra expense.  As a friend of mine often says in her Scottish brogue, "buy sh!te, buy twice".

Thule provide an online roof bar application guide (and accurate too) that lets you check the suitability of their products against your car.  Gen I and Gen II Prius models are listed, so go there yourself and check it out.

I'll write a bit more about my Mont Blanc experience in a subsequent post.

Winter and Prius MPG

Last summer, 2011, or what little summer we actually enjoyed here in Scotland, the Prius was averaging around 54 to 55 mpg.  This was all in my usual routine of mostly urban driving (school run, shopping, etc.) with about a third on country roads (travelling between villages on a mixture of A- and B-roads). The journeys were mostly completed by me and two small children.  Tyre pressures were set to a slightly higher 41psi to reduce rolling resistance and have been maintained at this throughout, save for a drop in pressure of 1 or 2 psi between checks occasionally.  


I changed the aerodynamic efficiency of the car later in the summer when I fitted Thule roof bars (a Thule 754 foot pack with Thule square bars).  Economy subsequently dropped to around 52 to 53 mpg in the same circumstances.  Now in the wintertime, and experiencing the coldest temperatures of the winter season so far, the Prius is only averaging about 50 mpg.  Daytime temperatures have been between -1°C to +4°C.  Yes, I have kept the roof bars on, and yes, I should take them off but I haven't done so for a couple of reasons I won't go into here.  However, it all got me to thinking that I should consider recording on a weekly basis what I am experiencing in terms of mpg, tyre pressures, type of driving, average temperature range, etc.  It might make an interesting set of charts and graphs over time.  Well, interesting to me anyway.   I can hear my wife sigh now just at the mere hint of spreadsheets and graphs!

Rain Drops When Opening the Doors

Quite a surprise today when I went out to scrape the frost off the Prius - there wasn't any.  Hurray!  Instead there was cold, chilly, plopping rain - the kind with big fat rain drops.  Boo!


I don't know about you but whenever I open the back doors and there's rain drops on the Prius then a few drops will fall from the top of the door opening onto the side of the back seat below.  It's not a problem at all since there are so few whenever this happens.  But it is just a little niggle.  I'm not sure how the third generation Prius is in this respect.  Incidentally, the tailgate does this too when opened in the same conditions, dropping a few rain drops onto the luggage area floor (or on the contents within).  Anyway, just thought I'd mention it.


Here's hoping we have a rain and frost free day tomorrow.

­Lost My Prius Remote Key Fob - And Found It Again

Agh! I lost my master Prius remote key fob the other day.  I'd had a hectic day organising childcare then driving a hired van to take some of our household furniture and items into storage as part of a de-cluttering exercise.  Stupidly, I had the van keys, the Prius key and our second car's key in my boiler suit pocket altogether.  These got swapped at different points in the day's activities between my rucksack and boiler suit.  With the hire van outside the next morning and due to be taken back to the depot I was searching the house high and low for my Prius keys.  Slowly, that sinking feeling that I had lost the Prius keys started to sink in.  It wasn't just the fact that this was the master key that was upsetting me so much as the fact that my house keys and other important keys were on the same key ring.  I grabbed the second Prius remote fob and used that with my back door key so that I could get the van back and get other jobs out of the way.  I'd look again later, I thought.

Well, later came and it fared no better.  I'd already thoroughly checked the van to see I hadn't dropped the keys in the cab.  I called my wife on her mobile phone and left a message - had she seen them?  I was starting to get agitated so I called the van rental company to see if maybe the keys had slid out of my pocket and got wedged between the driver's seat and backrest.  They were very obliging and as helpful as they could be but, nope, no joy either.

A Possible Solution to Replacing the Lost Prius Key

I then started to check the internet for solutions.  Well, where else do you turn to for help in the 21st Century?  I came across useful devices that you can attach to your key fob that help you locate them when lost, such as the Loc8tor Lite that you can buy from online stores like Amazon (click here to see more info). However, these devices are not for those blessed with after-thoughts like myself.  I then turned to thinking of buying a second hand Prius remote key fob from eBay where a search of completed listings shows that you can pick one up for around £30 to £35 plus shipping (about another £2 to £3).  'Aha!' I thought.  All I need do now is learn what the options are for programming it for my car.  The most obvious, and most expensive option, would be to get the remote programmed at my local Toyota dealership.  The second option would be to try programming the key myself.  A quick internet search turns up possible solutions, such as the one below that should match the needs of my second generation 2006 Prius.  Please note: I did not try this sequence myself so I cannot vouch for its effectiveness or accuracy.  (If anyone has tried it then I’d love to hear from you and you could help others too.)

Reprogramming sequence:

STEP 1. Driver door open, no key in slot, door unlocked. 
STEP 2. Put valid key in and out of slot twice within 5 seconds. 
STEP 3. Close and open driver door twice. 
STEP 4. Insert and remove key in slot. 
STEP 5. Close and open driver door twice. 
STEP 6. Insert master key in slot and close door. 
STEP 7. Press power on then press power off in one second interval. This is add mode 
STEP 8. Remove key from slot 
STEP 9. Car should lock and unlock door once for add mode. 
STEP 10. Press both buttons on transmitter. 
STEP 11. Within 3 seconds, press one button. 
STEP 12. Car should respond with one lock-unlock. Two means it didn't work. 
STEP 13. Open a door or put key in slot. 

Problem Solved

How did I eventually solve the problem?  My wife called back.  Yes, she had the key all along.  Didn’t I know that? I wasn’t sure whether to rage or punch the air for joy.  Joy won over in a flash.  I was pretty darned happy actually.  Relieved too.  Lessons to be learned up here?  Don’t put all your important keys on one bunch.  Consider buying a key finder gadget like the one mentioned above.  Communicate with your darling spouse.  Some of these lessons will no doubt be easier to implement than others.

In the meantime, happy driving!