A trip to Colorado in a FEH.
Well, I'm back home now. The trip up to Colorado was the typical curse that I seemingly must be forced to deal withon every highway trip. I left the house, only to be in an ice storm 15 minutes down the road. I wasn't surprised, just irritated at how I seem to be unable to have good weather for a trip lately. The ice storm was the typical nasty in the effect that no defroster on the planet is capable of keeping the windshield clear. I literally had to stop a couple of times to scrape the ice off of the windshield.
By Wichita Falls, TX., I was out of the storm, and being beaten on by a 20 miles per hour headwind. Memories of my first trip to Colorado in the Prius came to the surface, where I was fighting 35 miles per hour headwinds. The cold and wind made "stealth" (EV mode driving) something of a theory about something that the FEH is supposed to be capable of, while rolling through the small towns. I pulled into Amarillo, TX. in need of fuel, and with a bruising 29.2 mpg average on the consumption screen.
Once filled, I headed back into the cold north winds. By this time, the temperatures were dropping noticeably as I continued north. Stopping at a drive thru in Dumas, TX., proved that stealth was now completely impossible to achieve. The vehicle would shut down, only to start right back up and go to high rev to keep the cat warm. By the time I got to Raton, NM., and onto interstate highway, I was actually glad that I didn't have anymore towns to drive through. The consumption screen still refused to budge much over 30 mpg. The damage to my mileage from the cold made it's mark by having me come up 30 miles short of my final destination before needing to be refilled - to the tune of 32.9 mpg. The temps by now were down to -2 degrees F, according to the bank thermometers in the area.
Once in Aurora, the wether decided to moderate quite a bit as the days progressed. Despite the vast majority of the drives being within a few miles of my folks house, I was able to quite often show off the stealth ability to my varous family members. My Mother and I, even took a trip to the mountains for lunch, where I had the consumption screen up to a high of 39.6 mpg, by the time we got back home. Local running around pulled the figure down to 36.5 mpg unfortunately by the time I got the tank filled for the drive back home.
The drive home started out a mess, in the regards that I got out the door quite late, and ended up having to grab breakfast on the run. This meant idling through a drive thru on a cold engine, so the tank got started on a sour note. Despite this, the weather was finally as good as could be expected for mid December, and the vehicle responded accordingly. By the time I pulled into Amarillo for fuel, the consumption screen showed exactly 40 mpg. B)
Unfortunately, the numbers fell back to 37.2 mpg, on the second leg of the drive, where I was actually expecting to post better numbers due to being able to stealth through the small towns along US 287. I was able to easily get stealth on the way home due to the much warmer temps, but I guess the terrain was less than forgiving than the 4,000 ft drop in elevation between Denver and Amarillo.
Still, temps were cool enough to have an effect overall on performance. The next trip up will be in July 2006, where I'm hoping to post even better numbers. The Prius managed to post ~13 mpg better in summer than winter on the same drive. I'm expecting to post similar improvement percentage wise (in comparison to the winter summer gap in the prius) on the next trip.
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