staze.net

Prius vs. Pickup

In a rare moment of weakness, I broke my Zen master concentration for a few milliseconds during the morning commute and ended up kissing the bumper of a full size pickup truck. I was going perhaps 5, no more than 10 miles per hour when the whole "two objects can't occupy the same space" rule came into effect. My kid was impressed: "That was scary" followed by "My muffin fell on the floor" and later "Wow Dad, looks like your license plate is bent!". Two immediate observations: 1) Every conceivable crumple zone did lots of crumpling and 2) the pickup truck bumper was completely unscathed.

I stopped by the local dealer's body shop to test the waters: $3,200. Time to call the insurance company.

I am happy that no one was injured and it teaches me to pay even more attention driving. However, I am a little surprised at how much damage was done.

CleanMPG Mileage Log

I finally got around to creating an account on CleanMPG.com and getting my mileage log up to date. It's a pretty nice setup for capturing and displaying mileage data. My record thus far:

I like the fact that temperature data can be captured, since "emperically" efficiency correlates well with ambient air temperature. This graph doesn't reflect that super well - I grabbed weekly mean temperatures for the week around each fill up from Weather Underground. In addition, a spiffy badge is dynamically created from this data:

Overall, I am happy with the mileage log interface and the graphs generated. I'll probably be using CleanMPG going forward to keep track of how the Prius is fairing.

In a perfect world an iPhone application for this would magically appear so I can easily enter the data right at the pump and avoid transcribing data to and from Notes.

All the gory detail of my mileage log can be found here.

Prius Update - Month Four

Four months into the new car and I am really enjoying it. Certainly I would prefer to spend less time commuting and doing other useful things, but those be the breaks.

Lifetime mileage is still doing pretty well, right in the same sweet spot. I managed to get a 54 MPG tank (offset of course by a lousy 42 MPG tank - cold snap, lead foot or cheap gas - dunno).

Either way I still get to keep my hypermiler merit badge. On the operating cost side, my 42 MPG tank really socked it to me with a wicked outlier, but overall respectable.

I've just come up on 5000 miles and took the car into the shop today for its first scheduled service. I asked for the dino juice to be replaced with synthetic Mobile 1 5W/30. We'll see if that has any positive impact on efficiency. It should certainly lead to longer engine life and perhaps I can skip every other oil change  - every 10k miles as opposed to every 5k miles per the manufacturer's schedule with cheap oil.

Prius Update - Month Two

In December I purchased a Prius to reduce my environmental impact and to have the side benefit of keeping a few extra pennies in my pocket. Since I was replacing a *cough*, I figured this shouldn't be hard on either count. I've been keeping a record of my gas station visits to have some hard data to work with. First item: miles per gallon.

The EPA-estimated mileage for the Prius is 48/45/46 (highway/city/combined). I have a mixed city/highway commute of just over 50 miles per day. So far I am managing to hover in the neighborhood of 50 MPG, which means I am slightly above the EPA estimate. Given the (relatively) cold weather and break in period of a new vehicle, it will be interesting to see if this improves a bit over the summer. Considering my previous daily driver was averaging 15 MPG for the same commute, I am pretty pleased with this.

Now some economics.

So far I am keeping in the $0.06 to $0.07 per mile range. Being able to use regular grade fuel rather than premium is a bonus here as well. I am saving an embarrassing amount of money each month by selecting a more sensible vehicle. Being green can keep more green in your pocket.

Boxplots generated by R.

 

El Tiburón

I finally got around to my first significant Prius mod - replacing the old whip antenna with a spiffy shark fin. Not only will I get a 0.00039 MPG improvement, I can carry a smug BMW aesthetic without any of the guilt (kidding on both counts).

I've always had a pet peeve with cars that have those little whip antennas mounted on the top rear center of the roof. To me it makes the car look like a little remote control toy. Somewhat more practically, the shark fin antenna should reduce the chance of breakage in car washes, should the need arise. (The conspicuously shiny circle of clean around the freshly mounted antenna highlights that this car does need a bath soon.)