I own a Prius
Let me preface this by saying I own a 2004 Prius. It does not have the ability to plug-in to an electric socket of any kind.
The Prius does indeed have regenerative breaking. But what most people do not realize is that the Prius can generate electricity WITHOUT USING GASOLINE! Electricity is created by turbines turning at a great speed. Wheels on automobiles also turn at a great speed. Toyota has set up the Prius to make use of turning wheels so they act like turbines. If the car is coasting, it is using neither gas nor electricity. Rather, it is using its momentum to add more power to the electric battery. Every time I remove my foot from the gas pedal, the gasoline engine stops using gas and the battery does not put out any electricity. Period.
If I am going uphill, depending on the number of passengers and the steepness of the hill, I will get anywhere from 12 mpg to 30mpg. But on the downhill side... no matter how many passengers, if I can coast down (and usually I can because I was just pressing the gas pedal to get to the top and I have significant momentum) I will get 100 mpg AND refill the electric battery while I do so (also without using any gasoline!)... until I need to press the accelerator again.
My Prius will sometimes use the gas engine to fill up the electric battery if it is low, but I find that the majority of the time the electric battery gets filled up just by me taking my foot off the accelerator for a few seconds at a time on my commute home.
The Prius' gas tank only holds 11.5 gallons of gas. I find that if I run it until the "low gas" light is flashing at me and screaming for me to fill it up, the tank will take a little over 9 gallons to fill and my odometer will show that I have gone approx 425-450 miles on those 9 gallons. If we take the low number and divide it by 9 gallons, that would be 47.22 mpg for a tank. The high number gives us 50 mpg for a tank. Those numbers are consistent with my average gas consumption in the 3 years that I have driven this car. Some tanks averaged as high as 54 mpg. It all depends on how often I was stuck in traffic. Interestingly enough, the Prius gets BETTER mileage in congested traffice than in open freeway driving without congestion.
By the way, my commute is 33 miles each way, so I do a LOT of driving. My commute consists of both clear freeway driving where I often zoom along at 85+ mph (yes, it is a very zippy car!!) and very congested freeway driving at 1-10 mph. During the 85+mph driving I will generally get 47 mpg because it will use a combination of gas and electricity depending on how full the electric battery is at the time. During the 0-10mph driving I get 100 mpg because at that speed it will only use the electric battery. If traffic comes to a complete stop, my car uses no gas whatsoever and the only electricity it uses is to keep the dashboard illuminated and my CD player going (plus whatever it needs so that when I do eventually press the accelerator it will go forward).
At this stage in our availability of car types, if my Prius were to be totaled and I had to get another car, I would definitely buy another Prius. The only other kind of car I would consider right now, today, would be a fully plug-in electric car.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
