Toyota Prius: Behind the Wheel Blog

Read our Toyota Prius news report here.

Today was the first day proper with the Carsales Prius in commuter mode. The Toyota, fresh from its interstate blitz, was showing 5.0L/100km average consumption before it left home for Luft Stalag Carsales.

With Melbourne's four-degree start to the morning, the windows were iced over -- especially the windscreen -- so the driver raced inside to fill a jug of water, leaving the engine running and the HVAC demisting as best it could. Leaving the car standing with the engine running doesn't in any way improve fuel economy, but nor did it appear to make much of a dint in the average figure.

Toyota was true to its word about the Prius. The engine reached operating temperature and the car was pumping out warm air well within four minutes of leaving home (although the stopwatch wasn't running and the longer idling from the cold start gave it a leg-up too).

If you're going to drive the Prius as economically as possible, you become very dependent on the rear-vision mirror. In electric drive alone, the Prius not only won't keep up with Melbourne traffic, but it will actively hinder traffic flow. That's not to say you can't drive economically, you just have to choose when and where. If there's traffic behind you and nothing in front, it's just courtesy to use the available power -- but that defeats the Prius's best efforts to be fuel efficient.

On Liddiard Street in Hawthorn, the Prius ran the entire length on battery power alone. This street runs downhill over a series of speed bumps and intersects with Glenferrie Road at the bottom. Since it's severely speed-restricted, there's no cause for the Prius to use the petrol engine and the battery remains charged through constant regenerative braking for the speed bumps and maintaining a steady speed on the downhill grade.

The car's 'multi-information' display can be configured to show how the drive systems are being utilised (ie driving or recharging) or how efficiently the vehicle is operating. There are two different types of bar graphs available to display the car's frugality, both illuminated by LED. These show fuel use at one-minute and five-minute intervals.

For the section of the commute along Rathmines Road and Liddiard Street, the one-minute bar graph showed zero fuel use. This was no surprise, since traffic was negligible (schools being closed for holidays in Victoria at the moment) and those two roads running downhill mostly. Together, the two roads contributed to a nett reduction in average fuel consumption from 5.0L/100km to 4.9L/100km -- in the course of a 16km commute.

That doesn't sound much, but over a short drive it's a very significant gain. Since the previous reset of the trip computer, the car had covered 160km of open-road driving, so the average wouldn't move quickly downwards with some around-town driving -- where the Prius excels. Two or three more commutes will change the complexion of the car's fuel use for this tank considerably, and the average fuel consumption figure should begin to tumble.

Can't say why, but 'Prudence' seems like a good name for this car.

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