I might as well introduce myself, I'm the current owner of a 2008 Smart ForTwo Pure. I love the car, use it for commuting to work daily. My mileage varies wildly, depending how enthusiastic I drive it (the Smart has a certain 'go-kart' feel that sadly encourages you to zip it everywhere). I can make my trips vary from 33 to 49 (using my ScanGuage II) depending on how I drive. My current commute is pretty basic 20 miles where I get 42-44 MPG more or less (less on heavy accident-induced traffic days). I'm keeping the Smart, and adding a 2010 Prius to my family. My wife will mostly be keeping the Smart for short errants around town and I will use the Prius for my commute. Plus I'm getting seriously tempted to order two bumper stickers that read "My other car is a Smart." and "My other car is a Prius." ;-) I placed a deposit with Winter Park Toyota in Florida an now just waiting till they can find a car. It seems Toyota doesn't quite have the polished ordering/tracking system like Smart or MB, so I honestly have no idea when my car will be found or arrive. Dealer estimates 2-8 weeks (nice huge figure, eh?). That's ok, I waited 12 months for my Smart. I ordered a 2010 Level III (I really wanted bluetooth on the steering wheel, not dash) in Barcelona Red. Rick Flashman Winter Park, Florida
Good luck and enjoy! I traded my 2008 fortwo passion in on my 2010 Prius IV. I feel like I'm in a luxury cruiser in comparison!
That's excellent mileage for a smart for 2. City EPA is 33 and highway 41. You must really be hypermiling it. You should be able to do much better on the Prius in stop and go. When I'm in the Bay Area, my commute is about 10 miles on express ways and freeways and takes about 20 minutes minutes during rush hour. It's during this time period that I get my best fuel economy. The first 5 minutes while warming up usually nets about 35 MPG. After that my economy for the next 15 minutes has been close to 100 MPG in slowish stop and go with practice. At first it was only 60ish or so. The trick on the freeway is to stay to the right and leave lots of space between you and the car in front. If you stay in the right lane, it rarely results in care passing you just so they can get back into the far right lane. This results in speeds between 20 and 40 allowing me to optimize P&G.
I have no idea how the EPA figures things, cause I rarelly hypermile. My commute is 10 miles city, 10 miles highway. I fired up the ScanGuage II this morning and tried a normal drive, no overly aggressive and no overly passive either. Just a normal drive, usually 5 over local speed limit (bad habit of mine) and used cruise control at 60 on the highway (55 speed limit). This morning I got around 34 MPG in the city portion and a total of 46.3 MPG for the entire 20 mile trip. I must admit, I didn't buy the Prius to save money. After all it is 13K more than my Smart ($11,500 vs. $24,500). There's a lot of gas I could get for $13K. I got it because I need a car with four seats too, and I'd rather consume as little gas as possible.
How accurate is what you're getting from ScanGauge to actual calculations? (miles driven / # of gallons added) I recently got a ScanGauge and I haven't bothered to calibrate or even look at the mpg figures nor set the fuel cutoff values. For all we know, it overly optimistic. My tracking of MFD values, fillups and manually calculated values in an Excel spreadsheet is what I go by. As for EPA, you can read about the test procedure at How Vehicles Are Tested. Be sure to click thru all the links on the left under Fuel Economy Tests and click thru all the tabs under Detailed Test Information.
Well that explains why they get such crappy numbers for modern efficient cars. They make all cars jump to speeds arbitrarily. Easy for a V8 to jump 10 MPH without a big change in fuel use, but ask my Smart's 1.0 liter engine to jump 10MPH instantly, and it will go into the low 20s MPG. lol
