After agonizing hours, eBay bids and losses, massive compromises (even considered salvage title), dealer greed, long wait promises, we connected via Craigslist with a dealer in Portland that had a consignment coming in. He arranged a swap with another store that had a new model of the same pkg. 7 config. and now our silver Prius is coming home on Saturday. Woohoo!! Have to pinch myself to believe it. I fly down Sat. am to bring it back on it's maiden voyage north on I5 to Washington. I can hardly wait!

 

Congrats!

 

Congratulations!

You might consider using the drive back to baseline your MPG at a given cruise control setting. Just top off the tank, reset your display and then use a set speed to measure your MPG over a 2-3 hour segment. Use a different speed for the next segment. This will give you insight to the relative MPH vs. MPG.

Bob Wilson

 

Good thought. I'm not sure how familiar I'll be with systems at first. I have a lot to learn. It's a 3 hr drive back, so I was thinking of breaking it into 1hr. cruise control chunks, traffic permitting. That way I can vary the engine rpm into 55mph, 62mph and 70 mph segments.

 

It took much longer at the dealer and I didn't leave Portland until 3pm. I left in a bit of a hurry to get home. There is so much to learn about the car that I didn't test all the features and many cruise control speeds. There were only a few stretches where traffic was light enough to use steady cruise control and for me to watch the computer. And sometimes that was when I would be going up an long incline, so it's pretty subjective.

Total trip was 171 miles, average mpg was 42. This included stints as high as 80 mph, so that really isn't too bad. One really needs to watch one's speed, the car is peppy and quiet, so it is easy to be going faster than you think. My mileage started going up dramatically as I slowed down and was on slower roads and more familiar turf. I leave the car to rest tonight a bit in awe. The trip back went smoothly. The car does very well on the freeway, very smooth and quiet. I was blown by the navigation system. It worked better than expected and even guided me onto the ferry and up to my island driveway. That was awesome. At times it feels like the car has a subtle background conciousness watching out so that you don't miss your turn, are nice an comfortable, adjusting systems, mirror dimming etc. and in its spare time it figures out how to manage the ICE and FE. We ended the trip stopping at the mailbox and then pulling into our rural driveway and up the hill to the house on FE. The only sound was pebble crunching under the tires and the lovely lady telling me that we had arrived at our destination and she was now concluding the session. Pretty remarkable.

 

Will, you are off to a great Prius ownership start. And for awhile you will be "discovering" the included features and you will probably be saying something like: "Wow, I am sure glad Toyota thought of that" The longer you have this car, the more you will love it.