As the other posters have noted, it will get better with experience, and also during warmer seasons. Cold weather drives the mileage down, with many folks getting low to mid 30's in the winter. Your extra 115 miles was done at 32.1 mpg, if you work out the math, so that's not unexpectedly bad for a new owner and winter driving.

 

Your gas mileage will vary........especially while the engine is breaking in. I averaged around 35-37mpg until i got over around 2000 mi on the car. I just had my first oil change at around 4800 and i did notice a slight improvement after that. I am now averaging around 41-44mpg. All the factors of driving will improve or decrease your mileage like the ones that have been listed here. Mostly warming up the car and fast starts and stops. They will drop your MPG quite a bit.

 

I have a trip which I routinely take on a fixed route of 2 miles at least 3 times a week. The vast majority of the time when I take the trip, my TCH is cold and has not been driven at all for the day or for a number of hours.

Today, I took the trip after I had been shopping and driving around town for a considerable time. Normally I get 28 mpg since I am going up two hills. Today, since everything was warm, I got 38 mpg. So I second Talmy's comment about combining trips and offer empirical evidence to support it.

 

Definitely takes both a) experience (and tips you pick up here), and b) distance, to recover your FE. If it's chilly out, a short trip will mostly be engine warmup, so you burn a bunch of gas and never get to drive the warmed-up distance to get the high mileage to offset it. So the tip for doing multiple short trips from furthest out to nearest is a basic hypermiler one--warm up the car on the distant stop, and hopefully keep it fairly warm from stop to stop on the way back.

Stop and go driving isn't where you're going to do best, honestly. Every stop requires a start, and every start is low FE. You should get decent mileage driving on the highway if you set it in cruise control, and I get my best (especially this summer when I first started) FE going through some towns on my commute rather than the highway--lots of lower-speed driving. While I can drive 30-40 and use EV mode frequently, I'm getting significantly higher FE than when I was using the interstates for most of my commute. But this is also based on making sure I get into "full hybrid" mode within the first couple of miles, so I can use EV mode freely the rest of the way.

And I've also done some recent cold highway driving with good FE--popped up from Boston to mid-Maine (~5 hour drive at near speed limit speeds), filled up on the road just after I got to a semi-highway, filled up in the same area before getting home, with some stops on the way up for Christmas shopping, and got 40+ mpg for that tank.

But yeah "warming up" the car is wasting gas. It'll warm up while it's moving, at better than 0 mpg which is what you get while you're sitting still. You can do stuff like shut it off at red lights while it's too cold to shut the ICE down, to reduce the wasted fuel during warmup. And definitely find out how to get into "full hybrid" mode to take full advantage of slower speeds. Keep a close eye on your battery charge level to keep it from getting low enough it'll run the ICE when you're stopped--plus I think it runs faster even when you're moving a lot of the time, if you get that low.

And keep reading the forums, and look for the threads where newbies are asking for help. Find the answers that have been given to questions you haven't even thought to ask yet! But you'll get there. And yeah summer will make a big difference too. Not sure I've noticed anything really for "break-in", but the seasonal changes are huge.

Just remember every trip is pretty much compensating for the fuel burned warming up at the beginning, and if you have a few low-FE trips (my laundry days kill me, for example) you need to use a bunch of miles going at higher FE to compensate... And one or two low tanks can take a summer to start compensating for. You just need to make sure you're doing the shorter trips as economically as you can, and figure out how to make the most of the good (generally longer) trips to build up your FE. Give it time.

 

Thanks...BUT I need a little explanation please....or should I say more silly questions...sorry
1)ICE??????
2)How do you keep battery level from running low?
3) If the display shows the arrows going from tire to battery...Is that bad??? My arrows go bad and forth both ways
4) The TCH changed an agressive driver to a cautious whimp!! Is that good? lol

 

1. Internal Combustion Engine (the thing that burns gas)
2. Accelerate and then let the car coast, use the brakes
3. Tire to battery means you are charging the battery...that's good. The arrow goes back and forth to indicate the power either being used or regenerated
4. You'll live longer, but end up eating more salad and less cheese burgers. It's your call.

 

A bit more--
2) Yeah generally any coasting or braking should regenerate the charge. You'll mostly use it up if you're driving in EV mode much. On the highway for example, especially using cruise control, you'll end up pretty highly charged without much trouble. If you're doing what I do and sticking to off-highway for 30-40 mph and lots of EV driving, you just have to make sure to let it coast sometimes, and judiciously use the gas to fire up the gas-burner once in a while.
3) Display shows where energy's flowing. MFD (multifunctional display, the non-Nav display inside the speedometer) version just shows a) from wheels to battery (charging), b) from ICE to wheels (generally burning gas to power movement), and c) battery to wheels (EV mode, driving purely on electric power, no gas burned). There's also electric boost, when you're using gas--you get both b and c arrows showing up. Nav display apparently shows ICE to battery as well, for when you're charging the battery from the gas engine.
4) Just don't be _too_ wimpy, hehe. That can actually be dangerous too. Drive defensively! Just not _offensively_.

 

I (somewhat) disagree. It was -10°F here this morning and there was no way i was sitting my butt in cold leather seats!!!! Sometimes you've just gotta take a hit.

Then again, I let it warm up 10 minutes and it still wasn't very warm, except for the seat warmers (why doesnt the TCH have a heated steering wheel??) And on my hour drive to work my back window never completely defrosted. Have I mentioned I hate winter???

 

It was chilly here too (maybe single digits when I headed out late morning?) but compared to outside inside the car felt practically comfy! Hehe. I do have cloth seats (one more advantage to those? ), but wearing gloves and normal cold-weather stuff I was fine in my car. It was, however, so cold it wasn't ever even going to instant ICE shutoff within the first 2 miles.. ended up just deciding to take the interstate to make up a little time and figuring I might not get my usual EV mode driving in much. I'd say I got close to 35 mpg but that doesn't count the two short runs to traffic lights where I turned the car off to save gas. But never did turn on the heat/fan the whole commute...

 

I sense there is a lot of guilt or angst amonst hybrid owners about hurting their mileage figures by using the heater, a/c, etc.
Let's get real for a second.
If it's freezing outside or uncomfortably hot, go for it, live a little..
You aren't going to singlehandedly melt the polar ice caps if you turn the heater on or let your car idle for a few minutes.
To rationalize your 'splurge' by guzzling all that gas for the few seconds it takes to heat up (or cool off) your car (and provide a little comfort), just take one less 'joy drive' per week.
Think of the trip not taken as a savings account.
If you used the heater for a total of 10 minutes, just pretend that you were going to take a 20 minute drive, just for the fun of it, but decided not to. The savings from not driving will pay for your foolishly wasting gas on heating up your car. If you used the a/c for 20 minutes, pretend that you were going to take a two hour joy drive, but didn't, so you are actually ahead of the game!

Life is short!