Driving my new car is a gas

I‘ve been driving around town with a Shell-eating grin on my face for the last month.

We bought a new Toyota Prius, one of those gas-electric hybrid cars. Our timing was impeccable, even if we can’t exactly take credit for it. We’ve been thinking about this purchase for about a year. As in all of our major purchases, we found it important to dither and fuss and change our minds a lot. Yet right after we finally pulled the trigger, gas prices soared to nearly $2.50 a gallon.

And you know what? We don’t care. It’s almost like telling a vegetarian that ground-beef prices have gone through the roof. The news is strictly of theoretical interest.

This Prius is ridiculously thrifty when it comes to using gasoline. Right now, I am averaging about 48 miles per gallon. And I know this is accurate, because the Prius has a little computer screen mounted right on the dashboard that tells me my gas mileage every second of every trip.

The EPA has rated the Toyota Prius at 60 miles per gallon in the city and 50 on the highway. But the EPA, as everybody knows, has been sniffing too many gas fumes. I knew coming into the purchase that those numbers were unrealistic. EPA mileage figures are too high for every car, probably because when they test cars, they do something no American driver has ever done. They drive the speed limit.

Consumer Reports rated the car at about 44 miles per gallon in mixed driving, which is far more realistic. In fact, I was getting about exactly that until this weekend when my pal Lyle and I drove out to Circling Raven Golf Course in Worley, Idaho. This drive is over a lot of winding, country roads through places like Rockford. The Prius apparently loves that kind of driving, since it caused my overall MPG average to shoot up to 48.

(Yeah, I like to keep track of it now, like I used to keep track of my batting average in softball.)

(Yeah, my friends find it exactly as annoying.)

One thing about having a computer screen in your car, you soon learn to figure out what kind of driving is bad for gas mileage and what is good.

Bad: Short trips in which the car barely gets warmed up.

Good: Longer trips, which is why it’s a good idea to link your errands.

Bad: Going 85 on the freeway (oh yeah, a Prius can do it).

Good: Going the speed limit on the freeway (it will reluctantly do that, too).

Bad: Driving on Spokane’s South Hill.

Good: Driving on Spokane’s North Side.

I’m serious, the Prius is clearly prejudiced in favor of the North Side. I’ve been averaging only about 40 mpg on the South Hill, and a whopping 60 on the North Side. Some might say it’s because of the efficiency-killing hills on the South Hill, but I think the Prius just gets depressed at being stuck behind all of those Mercedes SUVs.

Another thing: This car loves driving North Division. One of the anomalies of a hybrid is that it actually gets better mileage in stop-and-go city driving than on the freeway. That’s because the gas engine turns off entirely whenever you stop at a red light. It took a while for me to get used to that. It’s so … quiet. Yet when the light turns green you stomp on the accelerator and the gas engine immediately kicks in, like in a golf cart.

Did I say “stomp on the accelerator”? No, you should gently pull away from a standing stop for better efficiency. However, yes, I did stomp on the accelerator once as an experiment and I actually scattered a couple of pebbles. The gas engine is tiny (76 horsepower), but when you need extra power, the electric motor kicks in and delivers instant torque.

So after a month of driving, I have found that the alleged drawbacks of a hybrid are imaginary.

• You never have to plug it in. The battery is recharged whenever you brake, or from the gas engine when necessary.

• It has plenty of power going up hills. When that electric motor kicks in, you can roar straight up the Freya Street hill. Well, maybe you won’t roar. More like whir.

• You don’t drive it differently than any other car. All of the fancy hybrid functions are performed automatically by computer. All you do is hit the accelerator and the brake pedal and aim the thing at the road.

• It has plenty of luggage room. The battery on the new Prius is small and out of the way.

So, frankly, I see no downside. In fact, I would guess that everybody will be driving some kid of hybrid within a decade or two, if only because there is no reason not to.

And yes, the advantages are real. I’ve driven this thing every day for a month and stopped for gas, once. I had to put 7.3 gallons in it.

However, we’re leaving soon on a big driving trip to the Grand Canyon, so we’ll have to use a lot more gas. The way I figure it, we’ll have to stop for gas at least once on the way down, and probably even twice.

So when I say that we don’t care about gasoline prices, I am not being accurate. We care, we really do. But only about half as often.