If you drive a prius with a thought toward efficiency it is quite good. If you are a pedal masher it won't be so good. I have found this to be true for any car

If you drive a prius with a thought toward efficiency it is quite good. If you are a pedal masher it won't be so good. I have found this to be true for any car. The question for hybrids is if it's any more or less so. That is, is the effect of a "lead foot" more or less pronounced on average fuel consumption when compared to a non-hybrid economy car? My anecdotal experience with economy cars versus a similarly small, "sportier" car (Honda Prelude) is that efficient driving has more effect on the the latter (17 to 30 mpg, factor of 1.76) than on economy cars (25 to 36 mpg, factor of 1.44) they would fail modern emissions tests miserably, but cheap and efficient they nailed IIRC, the high-efficiency "HF" version of the 80s Honda Civic CRX typically got 45-50mpg, with the same caveat that it couldn't be produced today due to more stringent emissions standards and the added one that it only had two seats.