First off, let me say this car is EXACTLY like everyone on this list has described - AMAZING!!!. (Except for the lousy sounding AM band - ugghhh.)

A little bigger, and add in leather seats, and I would swear I'm in a high dollar luxury mobile. Add a manual transmission and a little more HP, and I'm in a very nice sports car. I think we've found a middle middle ground.

So far, I've got 412.0 miles on my first tank with either 4 or 5 bars left (can't remember). The computer says I've gotten 46.7 mpg so far. I look fwd to passing 500 miles on my very first tank!!!

What kills me is that yesterday morning I got about 52 mpg on the way to work. This morning, in heavy rain, I only got 43.1 mpg .

Oh well, I'm really paying attention to how I drive, and quite easily get it into eV mode (or whatever you guys call it) with 100+mpg with up to 4 bars assist at the same time - very cool.

Thank you all for making this site so wonderful.

Glad you like it. I thought AM always sounded bad..... don't notice this car being any better or worse.

great review. i haven't had the mpg loss during rain. but, we haven't had a heavy down pour. the am isn't any worse than my other cars, but i guess the reception must be better in these neck of the woods.

rain definitely affects mpg because of the amount of energy needed to lift the water from the road. there's a neat simulator that shows this in action:

http://privatenrg.com/RainyRoad.htm#How_about_Rain

the calculator is for a prius but most cars are the same. some highlights from the article:

"Water weighs approximately 8.33 lbs per gallon-US. A typically shod Prius with Goodyear Integrity tires will elevate an astounding 1,675,307 lbs of water an hour on a lightly soaked roadway. This 201,117 gallons of water being raised an average of 4.5 feet into the air takes about 2.84 kilowatt hours of energy which agrees with our 1.49 kW usage rising to 4.33 kW & this drops the Prius' mileage from 47.69 to 40.77 MPG."

it's about a 20% drop in mpg.