Great mpg!!
 

Mileage still impressive

I got 45.8 and 48.4 on my fillups to from South Carolina to Florida this week in my Prius v. I now have over 4000 miles with a running average of almost 45 mpg.

Keep it coming.

Is that all? I still don't understand why people buy hybrids when a small diesel car can give almost double that mileage with equally low emissions.

Keep in mind that dz302 is in the US. I'm not sure there's a diesel car available in the US that can get 90+ US MPG. The most popular diesel in the US is probably the diesel Jetta and its mileage isn't anything close to 90 US MPG.

This is true. I'm surprised nobody has set a business up importing small diesels from Europe as there seems to be a demand, despite fuel still being very cheap in the US.

The engines and cars must be DOT (Dept of Transportation) approved, must meet all EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations for emissions, must meet all safety requirements and after all that, the cars will have to be modified and will weigh about 100-400 kg more and get less MPG than their Euro counterparts.

Well emissions won't be an issue as regulations here are much stricter than in the US already. Safety may be an issue as the tests are different, but cars here are smaller so are often made safer anyway. I guess after import costs and modifictaions it would not be worth it!

Sorry Draig, that's not the case. The focus is mostly on particulates & nitrogen oxides over the pond, but here in Europe it's mostly on CO2. So the engine minimisation approach we have over here to reduce CO2 doesn't work for their requirements.

So a low C02 emitting diesel that does 90+ MPG here, emits more Nitrogen oxide than the 5.0 Litre V10 diesel truck that does 8 MPG i saw in the US? I still don't get it.

The last time I looked, the rules in the US appeared to penalise cars with good MPG. I.e., the NOx limit is based on the fuel consumed, not the miles driven.

(It was a long time ago & I may have misremembered, but it seemed very strange at the time).

But yes, the main difficulty with selling diesel vehicles in the US is due to the emissions rules.

I'm with Draigfly. Regardless of the emissions laws, we (the U.S.) sell tons of 1 ton trucks with 6 and 7 litre diesel engines which pump out literally tons of particulates, yet we do not have any small, high mileage diesel cars? This makes no sense. Hopefully the times will change because we need high mileage cars here like "yesterday"!!

Until then, I'll have to be happy with 45 mpg.