Join Fuelly and contribute to the real numbers. My numbers are lower, as well. I drive the I-10 between the I-215 and the Arizona border weekly, and on I-10 between Quartzite and Blythe daily. Averaging about 49. But there's the wind. Lots of headwinds between Blythe and through Palm Springs on Friday afternoons. Little to no tailwind on Monday morning, as a rule. I do very little city driving (maybe 5%). But, the numbers still pay off at the pump compared to the 25 mpg I was getting with my old wheels.
Yes but . . . MPG is a function of a lot of variables. The real question is whether 57 MPG makes you happy compared to the alternatives. Personally, pocket the savings and have a happy. Bob Wilson
I finally finished my first tank today: 700.9 miles at 69.0mpg average according to the MFD. I had topped it off just after I got the car. Fillup took 10.477 gallons, equating to 66.9mpg assuming the odometer and the pump are accurate. That would suggest that my MFD reads 3.1% high. But thanks to the discussion here and Wayne Gerdes' report at cleanmpg, I realized that I should not have assumed all these years that odometers are accurate: It's great that Wayne does this calibration, but he doesn't say how he does it. If it's a running sum of point-to-point segments of the route, I would worry about the accuracy of the final total. It would be much better if one ran a straight route and had GPS calculate the distance between the start and the finish. So should we be quoting MFD GPH values or the calculated numbers from gallons pumped? For consistency's sake, at least when I'm near home I use the same pump at the same gas station with my car pointing the same way, fill with the pump on the slowest flow setting on the autostop, and stop filling when it clicks off. The MFD numbers I got are close to those of krmcg and several other people on here. Mine are a combination of many short runs doing errands around here (usually about 7 miles each way), where I struggle to get 65mpg (more like 62mpg if the temperature dips below 40F). And a couple of 2 hour highway runs on a warmer day where it got 76mpg one way and 83mpg the other. Looking back at my spreadsheet from my Gen 3, I see a 69.5mpg tank which probably involved mostly long highway runs.
I drive the same roads; Mass Pike, I-290, I-495 63 miles (57 highway miles) to/from work. The entire route consists of rolling hills. A technique that I started employing a few weeks ago is to ease up on the hills by keeping the car in ECO range on the HSI, and then coast down the hills by depressing the accelerator slightly to prevent regenerative braking. You will drop your speed by a few MPHs (e.g. 70 to 65 typically) going up and increase your speed (e.g. 73-75) going down, but will pay dividends by increasing your MPGs by 5 or so. I used to set the cruise control at 70.
Actually that is exactly how he did it. He always uses a GPS. You can usually see a pic of his GPS in his posts that shows the actual mileage. I noticed the difference immediately. What was always (for 9 years) a 127.5 mile RT commute with the Gen 3 changed to a 125 mile RT with the Gen 4. To validate the actual distance, I chose a 17 mile loop near home, measured it with google maps and ran the loop 3 times and my odometer shows 1.9% less miles than google maps shows. I am using the 1.9% to correct for actual miles driven when calculating MPG.
At one time, Garmin had a unit with OBD. Look for recording OBD and GPS. There are affordable units. But I just used a GPS mouse and laptop. Bob Wilson
I was thinking of something cheaper, especially because I'd use it just to calibrate the odometer. I see that the "Maps" app that comes with the iPhone quotes a length for each route. Anybody know if those distances are accurate? The iPhone has built-in GPS, can anybody recommend an app for measuring distance traveled?
Finally I had to leave my comfort zone. My 30 mile (each way) daily commute where I would hide behind trucks going 60 in the cold mornings on the freeway and then maximizing my afternoon MPGs by coasting some of the way home on the warm afternoons. These are the strategies that allowed me to average 66.6 MPG for my first 3500 miles. Then I took a 700 mile drive to Yosemite with my wife. Higher speeds (cruise control set at 68 MPH). Up and over mountain passes. Air conditioning. These two tanks averaged only 57.5 MPG. The HORROR!
Now that I have 1600+ miles, and the '16 Two Eco is broken in, I just got back from a 120 mile drive primarily on Interstate Highway, over a mountain pass and back. Just for fun, MPG's be damned! Speeds ranged from 65 to 85, mostly in the 75-80mph range with one 12 mile section that gained 2300 feet in elevation at 68 MPH, which the car did with lots of power to spare and no noticeable battery drain. The battery icon showed half full at the top of the pass, and most of the time it was charging rather than discharging. Returned home with 53.3 on the dash counter. Two factors to note, temps ranging around 40, and thin high altitude air, 6300 to 10,600. Think about it, force aside/displace less air molecules, burn less gas. There is generally about one third less air molecules per unit volume at 10,000 feet if my understanding is correct. I have always gotten higher highway MPGs here in Colorado than in lower elevation states.
My 1st Tank of Gas since I drove the car out of the dealer on March 5th. My commute is 50% city and 50% freeway, daily trip about 33 miles. Fill up at station on 1st click 10.484 gallons regular Gas. Tank Average 69.0MPG Calculated 64.0MPG. My 1st tank of Gas.
Good point. 691mi divided by 10.484gal would be 65.9mpg, not 64mpg. From what I've been reading here and from my first effort at odometer calibration it appears that the odometer reads LOW by 1-3% versus GPS (my first estimate for my Gen 4 is 1.5%).
Looks like calculated mpg is gong to always be 5% or more lower than displayed. Why Toyota has not addressed this issue after years and years is beyond me and at this point is intentional and not incompetence.
My 2011 Gen 3's displayed MPG was consistently 5% higher than the "calculated" MPG derived by dividing miles covered (as shown on the MFD) by gallons pumped. My first tank in my Gen 4 was 3% high by this calculation. Now I realize that the odometers read low in comparison to GPS measurements, in my Gen 4's case roughly 1.5% low. If I correct the odometer reading to compensate for that error, my displayed MPR (69.0) is only 1.6% higher than my corrected calculated MPG (67.9). There is always the question of how accurate the gas pumps are..........
