Curb your enthusiasm
Do Larry David and Arianna Huffington know about this? Of course not -- they are celebrity Prius drivers who live in balmy Los Angeles. But the Prius -- Motor Trend's Car of the Year for 2004, lest we forget -- has an unpleasant secret for owners in New England and other cold-weather climes: lousy winter gas mileage.
In a nutshell, my car has been averaging around 33 miles per gallon since December, versus a more impressive 45 before that. (During the recent super-deep freeze, it was down to 27 miles per gallon.) My dealer blew me off, so I took my problem to the Prius cultists at a Yahoo! newsgroup. The main issue, they explained, is that the Prius uses its gasoline engine to warm up the catalytic converter, which is of course cold in the winter. This takes about 15 minutes, rendering the first quarter-hour of driving quite fuel-inefficient. Normally the gas engine turns off and on, working in tandem with the car's electric engine, and that's how it gets the amazing fuel efficiency.
If you understand statistics (and I don't), you know that the first 15 minutes of operation wouldn't affect the mileage much during a 100-mile drive. But the pre-2004 Priuses are underpowered vehicles best suited for commuting, hence the bad winter mileage. I ran my gripes by Toyota spokesman Wade Hoyt, who initially responded that all cars experience a 15 to 20 percent decrease in gas mileage during the winter, which didn't sound right to me or to one of our auto writers.
But shouldn't the slick-o Prius marketing campaign warn cold-weather drivers that they won't get anything near the 52/45 city/highway miles per gallon that the car advertises? Hoyt's response, via e-mail: "By court order, all carmakers are only allowed to advertise the EPA label values. The EPA tests are conducted at 72 degrees F., and therefore reflect summer driving. That's why the EPA findings carry the required `your mileage may vary' advisory."
In a follow-up message, Hoyt conceded that "it seems that cold weather has a more noticeable effect on hybrid fuel economy than on that of conventional cars." Something to keep in mind when Toyota starts hyping its hybrid SUV, the Highlander, for next year.
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