Gojirra99

Why you're not getting the mpg you expect

For years, automakers have been criticized for producing vehicles that get so-so gas mileage. But as gas prices climb and consumers seek more miles per gallon, it turns out that fuel economy is much worse than it appears--50 percent less on some models, a new Consumer Reports analysis reveals.

Drivers who track their own fuel economy have long known that their results seldom match the gas mileage claimed by the Environmental Protection Agency on new-car stickers. Our study, based on years of real-world road tests over thousands of miles, quantifies the problem across a wide swath of makes and models.

We compared the claimed EPA fuel economy with the mileage per gallon we measured for 303 cars and trucks for model-years 2000 to 2006. Our selection represents a good cross-section of mainstream, high-volume vehicles. We looked at city, highway, and overall mpg.

Highlights of our study:

• Shortfalls in mpg occurred in 90 percent of vehicles we tested and included most makes and models.

• The largest discrepancy between claimed and actual mpg involved city driving. Some models we tested fell short of claimed city mpg by 35 to 50 percent.

• Hybrids, whose selling point is fuel thriftiness, had some of the biggest disparities, with fuel economy averaging 19 mpg below the EPA city rating.

• The EPA ratings are the result of 1970s-era test assumptions that don't account for how people drive today. Automakers also test prototype vehicles that can yield better mileage than a consumer could get.

• Despite federal certification, it appears that U.S. vehicle fleets, all cars and light trucks produced in one model year, don't meet government fuel-economy standards. For example, fleet mpg for 2003-model-year vehicles we studied was overstated by 30 percent.

For consumers, the news means that their vehicles typically cost hundreds more per year to operate than they were led to believe. Put another way, when gas in August 2005 hit $2.37 per gallon, the mpg shortchange effectively boosted the price for some motorists to $3.13 per gallon.

For the nation, where the fleet average fuel economy is near its lowest point in 17 years, the findings suggest that the country is far short of its energy goals.

“We are concerned about the differences,” Margo Oge, director of the EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality, said of our study. “I think we can do a better job to help consumers assess actual fuel economy.”

Click on this link to see all the details of the testing, as well as the results:

http://www.consumerreports.org/main/...1126102185214#

RON430

I've posted on this and started a thread, I saw this article in the magazine. It seems like we have been kidding ourselves and the car companies made the feds a partner in making a fleet that doesn't offer many choices for good mileage. Unless you want to ride around in a Prius or Civic or Mini, you quickly find the real world is 25mpg at best and there are too many cars that are in the teens, like my GS430, and even single digits are still possible in vehicles, sputes and the mega power stuff running around. Of course they are better in most every way than what was available in the 60s but we aren't getting that much better fuel economy. The auto companies say they are making what the consumer wants and that it would cost trillions of dollars to make fuel efficient cars. And unfortunately we got the government we deserved that was more than willing to back off on fuel economy rules to play along. And yes, maybe I am to blame as well. After all I went shopping for 300hp. I told my wife when we bought the GS430 that maybe it would be the last V8 we ever owned. Then I started to think I wasn't too upset with the mileage and the gas bills. But now, I may be back to that original thought. Sure 4 or 500 horsepower sounds neat but you can turn off all the cylinders you want and plop in an electric motor with a couple of hundred pounds of batteries but the net result is you probably aren't going to break 30mpg in the real world. My auto buying habits are changing and I don't spend one tenth what a lot of people spend on gas as a percentage of income. Now if we could just get accurate mileage numbers. Maybe there would be a lot less Suburbans and Escalades running around.

jrock65

Those numbers confirm what I've suspected all along. Most cars get significantly worse than EPA in the city and slightly better than EPA on the highway.

Combined, real-world mileage is almost always worse than combined EPA mileage.

Check out the 25 mpg of the Accord Hybrid, vs. the 23 mpg of the EX V6 Accord. A measly 2 mpg. What a terrible deal given the premium.

jrock65

I think a good general rule of thumb to extrapolate your real-world combine mpg is to take the EPA city number and add about 1 or 2 mpg. (This wouldn't work for hybrids though).

So if they EPA says that you get 18 mpg in the city, a general estimate of your realworld combined mpg is about 20 mpg.

TheRupp

Although I don't doubt this, I can honestly say that my ES's EPA (19/26) is pretty dead-on.

Check it out though, Toyota on top of almost every category

RON430

This city - highway stuff is only moderately useful to establish a real world combined number. When I first got my GS 430, like most people, I spent a lot of time enjoying it. And most of it was highway for some trips. City - highway mixes are different for everybody. Figuring you can magically put together an accurate number from either the epa city/highway or somebody's theoretical city/highway loop are generally not going to do much good. And of course there is highway at 65 mph and there is highway at 28 mph like you maybe get on freeways around here for the eight or ten hours a day of rush hour. I probably spend 90% of my time in city/low speed driving. And my GS 430 is very consistent at around 18 - 19 mpg. On a pure highway run I am probably in the 24 - 25 mpg range. I have 52K miles on my 2k1 GS 430 and have it maintained to better than Lexus requirements at Magnussen Lexus (not **** about it, I just don't put much miles on it so I get ahead of the service schedule on those rare occasions when it goes in for a visit). We don't watch my wife's 2k3 GS 300 nearly as close but my guess is that it is one to three mpg better on the type of driving we do which is about the same on both cars. Long before the article most people knew the published figures aren't all that useful.