wrote in message
oups.com...

Bill McKee wrote:

Prius on a good day makes 45 mpg. That is nice, but the only ones who
are
beating the 45 mpg max are the "hot rodders" who are stuffing more
batteries
in and adding the "plug in hybrid" capability. Long highway trip, you
will
get about 30 on a hybrid. Very little braking, slowing down, etc that is
recovered as stored energy. The around town and short stop and go trips
are
the most efficient use. The plug in modifiers get the advantage of the
extra battery capacity and plug in to the house charging. Up until a
couple
of years ago, that voided the hybrids warrantee.

As usual, dead wrong again!!! See he
http://randyrathbun.org/prius/prius_mileage/

Then this:

After driving Diesel Volkswagens for 25 years, we have moved into a new
era. We are now driving a 2002 Toyota Prius hybrid car. So far, we
can report that driving the Prius is remarkable for being so
unremarkable -- it feels very much like any other Toyota with an
automatic transmission, only better because the transmission is in
effect continuously variable. A computerized control system moves
energy between the gasoline engine, the electric motors, the battery,
and the wheels; if it weren't for the readout on the dash, we probably
wouldn't notice most of the optimizations that it performs.



Toyota Prius dash and shift lever
Toyota Prius mileage computer

Especially in winter driving, we found that mileage is much better once
the engine is warmed up; the warmup is much faster when temperatures
are higher. In the pictures above, we had just completed a trip of
about 35 minutes duration in 55 degree weather (clicking on either
picture will display a larger version). The mileage was relatively
poor in the first 10 minutes (the first five are not shown), then
steadily improved during highway driving to more than 50 mpg. The
final 10 minutes show very high efficiency in low-speed driving, when
the Prius can shut off its gasoline engine much of the time and operate
silently in electric mode using stored energy from the battery. For
this reason, city mileage really is often better than highway mileage.

And this that shows an average of 48.2 mpg:
http://www.greenhybrid.com/compare/m.../car/1089.html

And this, showing virtually the same mileage:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/16705.shtml


So you come up with 1 person. The 45 is the normal maximum average for
mixed driving conditions. That is for stop and go driving. Highway, the
milage drops to the underpowered gas engines performance. And how many
websites did yo peruse to find a couple that did make te 45 mpg, but not the
50 mpg.