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Originally Posted by coyote
One thing that surprises me is the MPG they received after their 166-mile test drive. They got 36.3 MPG in mixed city/highway driving. I'm not surprised that they received this mileage; what surprises me is it is *less* than what they received in their 2005, which was 38.9. "Driven similarly" is what they said.
I was hoping that the new 2006 would receive mileage closer to the stated MPG when driven "normally", meaning "without care." I guess I assumed that the increased horsepower of the 2006 would make that so. Perhaps not.
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Re: the realized mpg of the new car... how many miles are on this engine ? Not many, I'll bet...maybe just a couple thousand miles? The article states that it's a pre-production car, with a couple of tweaks to make yet. Given the (admittedly) small delta between the EPA rated mpg of the old / new car, I'm not entirely surprised to see the writer's actual in both cars (he drove them 'similarly', as you note). Also, take into account that the '05 was probably well broken in.
What we're looking for, I believe, is increased *potential* - and we're only going to see that when the first owners get their cars, break in the engines, and report back to the community-at-large. We know what the potential is of the old car, from reading the owners' experiences. The true test will be when one of them takes an '06 for a test run or purchases one - they know how to tap the potential, and then you'll have an 'apples for apples' comparison.
Increased HP alone isn't going to improve FE. A majority of the time, the inverse is true. 'Normal' driving isn't going to get you EPA rating - we know that by now - even in the case of electric-only mode vs. a regular ICE (not many achieve that 60mpg city rating in the Prius II, do they ?)