Day 4

After 3 days of driving, starting out with a quarter tank of gas, I finally needed a fill.
Another day off so I went to Palm Springs for a little bit of fun. One big upside to this test drive is that I get to experience “realistic” highway driving. Today I finally got a real experience of the Toyota Prius.
Let’s do the math. According to my form with the car rental agency and the odometer, I’ve driven about 130 miles in the last 3 days, all city driving. This morning I needed about 3 gallons of gas to get the tank back to where it started. So that’s about 43 MPG. According to the EPA estimate the 2009 Toyota Prius has 48 city and 45 highway. Since it’s a burning oven outside here in So Cal, I have the air conditioner on as low as it can go. So the 43-MPG is quite reasonable.
Usually before I go to Palm Springs I have to make sure my tank is full, it holds about 15 gallons with an MPG of 20. By the time I get back home I’m lucky if I still have a half tank left. I left for Palm Springs with about 4 gallons of gas in my tank. I get back and I’ve only used about 3 gallons. That means I drove to Palm Springs with an MPG of just under 50, I conserved the AC this time.
So far a hybrid doesn’t seem like a bad choice for my next car. I have about 3 days left. Since I work tomorrow morning but I don’t have to work after that until Monday night, I’m thinking about one more long distance trip. I have family in LA; maybe I’ll pay them a visit.