Taking the Prius on a road trip
On the weekend we took the Prius out for it’s first long-distance drive. We travelled about 450km to the town where Dave’s parents live, taking about 5 hours (including a couple of stops).
We’d been told that a Prius wasn’t as efficient on country drives, but our experience showed it being only slightly less fuel efficient than it is on our regular city routes. It did very well on the long drive: on the way there we got an average of 4.8L/100km fuel use; on the way back it was more like 5.6L/100km. Dave found that cruising along in 90km per hour zones was more fuel efficient than driving in the 110km per hour zones.
Our return trip had us driving into a strong headwind, which is why there’s such a difference in the rates. Some Prius reviewers had mentioned that it gets blown around a bit in strong winds, and we found that to be true! Geraldton is pretty windy, and the Prius is a pretty light car, so we weren’t really surprised by that.