Part of it is break in, both the car and the driver. I did worse when my commute was only 5 miles each way. Now it's 18 miles of freeway, residential and hills.
One of the key things is to batch together your errands. If you make a lot of short trips, there's no way that you can get great gas mileage. The car has to get warmed up pretty well to get good gas mileage. My old commute was about 10 miles each way mixed freeway and arterial, and that was enough to get the car warmed up, I was getting about 50mpg even at that distance. Now that I'm not commuting and taking shorter trips, my gas mileage is more variable, 41+, but not the 50mpg that I used to get. On the other hand, I still end up using less gas than I was. -Roger
Not sure what city you live in, but the state probably explains it. I just looked up the temps in Middletown, NJ (http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USNJ0308.html) and it looks like the highs are in the high 30s and lows are in the 20s. Cold weather hurts fuel economy of all cars.
Did you break the car in by driving and breaking nice and easy the first 600 miles as the manual says to do? I live in hill and cold country and am averaging around 50mpg. I've just passed the 1000k mark and I'm still driving her nice and easy.
