Wondering if anyone has been back to dealer with poor mileage problems. If so what did they find, do, say, etc? I have had my CVT for about two months with a little less than 2K miles. I started out with about 39MPG and now am down to 37 or so combined city/road. I could live with 40, but not 37. My area is traffic light hell..you know sit and wait for light to do its thing. I drive the car easy trying to maximize mileage, but it just dont do it. I do run air and use economy mode, etc. I wont go to extremes that I read about on this list. As I have said in other messages, I have driven 6-8 other HCH and they dont seem to do a lot better, maybe low forties in my abbreviated tests with them. If you are reading this and drive a big old Chevy Surburban or Tahoe, yes I know, 37MPG would be heaven, but the HCH aint a Surburban or Tahoe. Just drove one of them tonight for 120 miles...17 mpg!

 

With a lot of lights you will want to try to keep the battery charged as much as possible. This means lots of coasting to stop signs and slow accelerations. If the speed limit is 35 and you only have about 1 block to get to the next stop sign don't even try to get to 35. Acellerate to 25 or 30 and when you feel you can reach the next stop light start coasting. Most stoplighs I see are on multi lane roads. If thats the case then don't worry about people behind you. They can always pass you if they are in a hurry.

I suspect your mileage went down because the temperature went up and you are using the A/C more than you used to.

Edit: See if you can get the timing down of the lights. Sometimes you can get familiar with them and get them timed good enough where they are esentialy eliminated.

I had one light in my route that was always red. It was obscured by a downhill and a bridge so I could never see it. After a while I knew it was red so I started coasting well before the light and eventualy found the coasting point where I would get at the light right as the light turned green. I got used to people passing me as I slowed down when I would constantly roll past them as the light was turning green and I was just arriving.

 

The time when your car (any vehicle) is using the most amount of energy is during acceleration. If you speed up quickly this will blow your FE right out the window. When you are dealing with continuous lights it's usually best to cruise along at the minimum speed possible, given traffic. That way you aren't burning up tons of gas in acceleration, then slowing down quickly, wasting more energy.

One thing people tend to forget (or don't know) is how much gas the car uses to accelerate. I've seen the Prius II guzzle up to 55L/100km (~4mpg)during hard acceleration, so the more of that that goes on, the worse the FE will be on average.

I doubt it's the car giving you low FE. There are enough people in the DB with averages that low in the HCH. Really depends upon how you drive.

 

Whilst you might not go to the extreme of pushing the air pressure in your tires to the max sidewall listing, you may still want to check to be sure that the air pressure is correct and consistent on all tires.

When I first checked my tires, there was a five pound difference in the highest to lowest, from 28 to 33. I made them all 34. That made a 2-3 mpg difference. Pushing them to 40 raised this another 10-15 percent and pushing it to 44 (sidewall limit) made another 10 percent.

I am now, consistently, getting 60+. Thought my drive is mostly highway, I do have a fair amount of congestion. In those areas, I get spot mileage of 46-49.

Another fairly overlooked item is the air filter. Eventhough your car may be new, if you are consistently running through areas of dusty construction, your air filter may be fouled. Check it and if it shows dirt, either replace it or vacuum out the dirt as a stop gap. Again, this could give you 10 percent better mileage.

Lastly, look in the trunk. Are you carrying weight that you really don't need? At one point I was confused by why my mileage was down a bit, and I opened the trunk to find 12 12 packs of Diet Coke my wife had gotten on sale the week before. At (about) 8 pound each, that is 96 pounds I had been lugging around for a week. I can only estimate the hit on mpg as about .5, but every little bit counts.