Out of gas in a Prius!

Here’s what happened. It is a glorious day at the end of March (29th). I had some errands to do, so I figured I’d get gas as soon as possible knowing that I was low on gas, and that Joann gets none-too-pleased when I drive the car on gas fumes.

The first time I went to the gas station, I realized after I got there that I forgot my wallet. I can count on a couple of fingers the times I’ve driven out of the house without my wallet. (Of course, the phrase “I hate when that happens” very much crossed my mind... too.) So, back home I went.

About 0.2 mile from the house, a bunch of lights—“idiot lights” would be appropriate here—turned on across the instrument panel: a big RED exclamation point surrounded by an even bigger RED triangle (the “master warning light”), plus a little orange check-engine light. The touch-screen display was being fairly emphatic, too. It was saying something about getting someone to check the car. All this just because the car ran out of gas.

But this is partially an electric vehicle, too, right?

Yeah. Right.

Rather than bother my neighbor for gas, I decided to drive to the much-closer gas station after getting my wallet. I turned the car on in the driveway and, by golly, the same lights and warnings went on. The car seemed quiet. Come to think of it, quieter.

I drove out on battery power alone. The gas station I was aiming for is about 4.7 miles away, about another mile past a very long hill going down. To get to that hill, I have to drive up a very short hill. As I was driving, I watched the horizontal bars in the battery symbol displayed on the “energy monitor” screen. Usually, two or three bars, rarely four, don’t appear in the battery symbol, showing the relative amount of charge in the car’s hybrid battery. (This is out of a total of eight bars.) I’ve always seen them as white bars. Three were showing. Purplish. Then two bars. Then one bar.

I topped the short hill, stately drove across the flat section, and then coasted down the other side of the hill to a stop sign. In a hybrid, coasting generates electricity. Unfortunately, it didn’t generate enough electricity to increase the number of bars.

I made the left onto the “main” road and faced about one, one-and-a-half miles of flat road until reaching the long hill down. Never made it. I soon realized that the car wasn’t accelerating particularly well, even at 15 mph. In fact, the accelerator didn’t seem to be working at all. So I pulled off the road at a house. And I tried to turn off the car. I say “tried” because the car really didn’t like to be shut down at that point. In fact, it probably really did want to be shut down at that point. It took some time doing so though.

Luckily, the owners of the house I stopped at had a bunch of gas-powered items hidden away: lawn mower, snowblower, etc. They also had a couple of official gas containers, metal and plastic. A quick call from one spouse to the other confirmed which container had a gas/oil mix (for two-stroke engines) and which had good ol’ volatile flammable liquid hydrocarbons. Gas.

I learned a few things from this experience:

1. Don’t try this away from home... without a gallon of gas in the trunk.

2. You can drive maybe another two miles on electricity after the car has completely run out of gas. Note: That might be two miles of very slow driving. If you can, try to be driving downhill. Second best: Drive along a flat surface.

3. Yes, it’s partially an electric vehicle, but that part of the car draws so much electricity that you definitely need the gas engine to generate electricity for recharging the hybrid battery to power the electric engine so you can drive to the gas station when you want to get gas for the car when the tank is, if not empty, pretty damn close to empty.

4. You really do need gas to power the gas engine.

5. I don’t think the gas tank holds 11.9 gallons.

6. When you’re out of gas, don’t give the “idiot lights” a second thought.

7. People really are very helpful when you run out of gas, especially if you mention at some point that you have “one of those new gas-electric hybrids.” It also helps to mention that you haven’t quite figured out how far it goes on a tank of gas. You don’t have to mention that, though. People are pretty quick in figuring that out.

I’ve never run out of gas in a car before. Nor been in a car as its run out of gas. You learn something new everyday. At least I try to.

Postscript: Bruce, a college friend, reminds me in an email, “I note that you were careful to proclaim that you never ran out of gas in a CAR before. Gets you out of explaining about running out of gas in a U-Haul, during a blizzard, in a snow bank, during the gas shortage.” Oh, that. He’s right, especially the carefulness!

Postscript 2:Thank you to that household on Chester Turnpike, Auburn! You saved me a lot of walking and aggravation. And, yes, despite this incident, I like the Prius. I can recommend it for both “around town” and on the highway.