Hi all. I need some info before purcashing my first Prius,and would appreciate some feedback.

Can you choose to drive just on battery power? And if so how far can you go before you need to revert to the petrol engine to re-charge the batteries? And how long does this take? And are you limited to a top speed when just on the batteries??

Also,if you just drove using the petrol engine,what sort of mpg do you achieve? Just curious as to how efficient the actual petrol unit is.

Hope these questions make some sort of sense.

Many thanks,Neil

Are you thinking of buying a new Gen 3 car or an older model second hand?

If its the 2009 (GenIII) model, then you can select electric-only mode, but this is limited to below 30mph, and has a range of a mile or so. It also does not support hard (moderate!) acceleration.... go too fast, accelerate too hard, or have insufficient juice in the battery and the petrol engine kicks in automagically. As far as "using just the petrol engine" is concerned, you can't.... the hybrid drive cuts in the electric power as it sees fit - either in addition to or in place of the petrol engine.

I've had my Prius for about 1000 miles (quite new!) and it's returning about 50+ mpg.

would be able to answer better if i knew what one,gen1,gen2 or gen3??
yes their is a ev button
above 30mph the petrol engine will come in
if under 30 you could plod about all day on battery power(it recharges when you lift off and brake)
the petrol unit is very efficient as it uses the atkins cycle(lean burn 1.5 gen1 and gen2 1.8 gen3)

W.H.S. - my average mileage showing below.

I'm new to all this - just bought a Gen 3 Prius so still learning, but did a lot of research before buying (on both Gen 2 and Gen 3 + Honda Insight).

It's important not to confuse the Prius with a plug-in electric/hybrid-electric vehicle. As Dave R says the electric motor is designed to work in conjunction with the petrol engine (the synergy in "hybrid synergy drive"). There is a special electric only mode (by pressing an "EV" button) but I disagree with ormi: the car cannot recharge itself enough to keep going for very long, even if going slowly on the flat. IMO the EV button is not very practical, in fact the car handbook states that you could get worse fuel economy by using it since the car is designed to decide for itself when to use/recharge the battery - I suppose it might be handy in certain circumstances, e.g. to set off silently to avoid disturbance or if you knew there was a hill not far away to give you more charge you could prevent the car firing up the petrol unit.

To elaborate on Dave R's reply, what happens in practice is that the car is constantly switching between electric only, petrol + electric, and petrol + battery recharge, but as a driver you don't really sense which is being used (there is a graphic on the dashboard if you want to know). There is no limit on speed - even if you're in EV mode and you floor the accelerator, the car just beeps a warning that it is turning off the EV mode, switches to petrol and off you go. You don't have to worry about recharge times - the car recharges the battery as you go along using the brakes and or petrol engine.

I think it is more helpful (if a little simplified) to think of the car as being petrol powered but the addition of the electric motor & battery makes it much more efficient.

I'm doing city driving and getting about 50 mpg whereas my previous car (Renault Megane 1.4) typically returned less than 30 mpg (note these are the figures reported by the cars which have been shown to be overestimates, but that's another story...). I gather that this may improve once the car is fully run-in.

HTH - DrCez

+1 A good write up.

I think it's worth bringing out one particular sentence, and repeating that the Prius is primarily a petrol powered car.

Using the energy in the HV battery, is the least efficient form of energy usage because it has to go through so many conversions (and hence losses at each conversion) i.e. petrol to kinetic energy (engine), kinetic to electric (generator), electric to chemical (to store the energy in the battery), chemical to electric, electric to kinetic (motor).
Either drive a Prius and not concern yourself about the battery usage, or if you are dead keen on high MPG, try using the HV battery as little as possible.

BTW I'll be interested to see some posts on the MPG on the new Gen 3 in the winter time.

I agree with the last few posts.

I commuute up the M5 from Worcester to J3.

With my 55 Gen 2 TSpirit I got about 57 - 60 mpg over 500 mile fill up cruising at about 60mph.

My new TSpirit Gen 3 is returning 63 - 64 mpg ater 1000 miles run in and I am cruising a little quicker at 65 -70.

So far so good, car much more pleasant to drive but main grizzles are on poorer build qulaity and a silent turn indicator..... and no DAB radio!

I agree with the last few posts.

I commuute up the M5 from Worcester to J3.

With my 55 Gen 2 TSpirit I got about 57 - 60 mpg over 500 mile fill up cruising at about 60mph.

My new TSpirit Gen 3 is returning 63 - 64 mpg ater 1000 miles run in and I am cruising a little quicker at 65 -70.

So far so good, car much more pleasant to drive but main grizzles are on poorer build qulaity and a silent turn indicator..... and no DAB radio!

Thanks people,think that's answered my questions. I'm looking at getting an early gen2 model,so on a 54 or hopefully later. Anything would be better than my meganeCC,which returns about 30 mpg,and maybe 40 mpg on a run! Looking forward to being here as an owner.

I really think you should go test drive one. Once you've driven one you'll be smitten. You can drive on battery alone but only for a limited distance (about a mile or so) and it aint no speed machine on battery alone. The battery is more for the start stop crawl in rush hour traffic where you normally hardly get out of third gear before coming to a stop again. With the prius it will mostly do this sort of driving on the battery without starting the engine. Once upto speed the engine kicks in and away you go. I'm a cabbie for my sins (yeah yeah must have been bad in a previous life) and I have just purchased a mk3 Prius as I spend most of my time in start stop traffic and am hoping to make some serious savings.

Again, get yourself down to your local dealers and ask for an extended test drive. Dont forget both parts of your driving licence and some ID.