Or, “why I truly don’t give a 💩 about high gasoline prices in the U.S.”, the sequel.
Back in June of this year, in Post #1454, I explained why I didn’t give a 💩 about the price of gas. In a nutshell, I don’t use much. I drive my wife’s Prius Prime. The 30-mile battery range covers essentially all our local travel. One we’ve run through that, the gas mileage is outstanding.
The genesis of the prior post was our annual trip to Ocean City, Maryland, where the car got 72 MPG on the highway.
I figured it was a fluke. There were no hills to speak of. We probably caught a tailwind. Unlikely to be repeated.
Today we went leaf-peeping, driving from Vienna VA to Sperryville, VA and back. There is just something about the autumn scenery in central Virginia that my wife and I both love.
(Best sign seen on the trip: “God Allows U-Turns”. This, at the exit of the parking lot of a little church in Sperryville where we were — yeah — making a U-turn.)
The trip was a combination of interstate highways, then primary and secondary highways traversing hilly terrain. It was a nice drive — once we got off the interstate. I reset the odometer after the battery was depleted so that I could check the gas mileage.
Lo and behold, in round numbers, 72 MPG. Straight-up gasoline-powered transport, no battery. Completely different terrain, time of year, and driving conditions compared to last time.
So, no fluke. I’m not drafting trucks. I’m not doing 35 in the right-hand lane. I’m just keeping up with traffic, and paying a bit of attention to instrumentation on the dashboard that offers guidance for best fuel economy. (And it didn’t hurt that we didn’t need AC or heat for this trip.)
It’s odd how your expectations change. These days, if I come in under 65 MPG for the gas portion of a trip, I’m disappointed.
This is not as clean as a pure EV of the same size. At least, not as clean, at Virginia’s current electrical generating mix. But it’s not bad for the latest refinement of a gasoline-based technology that Toyota put on the road more than two decades ago. And the same drive train that gets us 72 on the highway allows us an effortless transition to electrical transport for all our around-town driving.
For us, this plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is absolutely the sweet spot in the spectrum of what’s on the market today. After a year of driving this car, we have no regrets about buying it.
