davrober

My 2011 rx 350 is getting 15.5-16 or so local driving. The sticker says 18 city driving. I live in Mt Sinai Long Island which is part rural and part suburban . I feel I should be getting at least 18 around here since this is by no means a city area. The car now has over 9000 miles on it. On a long trip on the interstate we averaged around 24 in mountain and 26 on flat so that was right on but around here which is nowhere near city it just stinks . Is there any fix for this or am I the only person complaining about this??? Id like to have the EPA look at this if it's happening to everyone. Thanks

InRBigness

16 instead of 18 is not that far off and could be attributed to amount of idleing the car does as well as the driving style. Warming the car up in the morning makes a big difference I find as well. The fact you are achieving expected highway miles leads me to believe it may be related to the driving style in the city. If the car was not performing properly I would expect your highway milage to be off as well.

I am getting around 26US mpg with my 450H in the city. That is the average I have acutally had it to 32 if I try and be conservative. My car is still in the break in stage with 1600 miles on it and its cold here so that hurts milage.

happy1977

If city driving with mostly 30mph, then you'll get 16mpg, if it's around 40-50, you'll get 17-18mpg. Uphills don't help too.

mswilsonuk

I get similar in my 2012 RX 350. On the highway @ 70-75 mph I get 24-26 mpg. But city driving I get 15 mpg if I am lucky. And trust me, since I got the car I have been driving very carefully to get the highest city mpg possible, so that I can benchmark the mpg. My average mpg per tank, with about 60% hignway is about 18 mpg

UCSB

If you search the forum, you will find threads where people have reported mileage as low as 14 MPG in city driving. I don't think that 16 MPG is very rare.

RXSF

Let me tell you that the EPA considers city driving a mixture of idling, slow traffic, but also factors in constant driving at around 40mph. 40-50mph is the sweet spot for good mpg numbers.

I live in San Francisco so the hills really kill my mpg numbers. Back when I had the RX330, I was getting 12-13mpg according to the computer. With the hybrid, I am getting ~26 in the city. Both of these are not what the EPA say, but clearly it is the environment that is the biggest factor

kwbuggy

I record all my fuel usage on the Fuelly website. I wish other Club members would do too so that we have a bigger sample to check. It only takes a minute to enter the data after a fill up.
These are my statistics over 13,530 miles in nine months. I have averaged 21 miles per US gallon over the whole period, 62% on the highway and 38% in town. My last tank was 90% in town, below freezing temperatures, snow tires on and using 87 octane winter blend gas and I got 16.0 mpg. My very best tank last summer yielded 26.6mpg at about 75mph. I'm pretty happy with the mileage, the car weighs over two tons empty and has awd so I didn't expect it to use gas like a Prius.

sightdev

"Warming the car up" is worse when it comes to MPG. engine will warm faster as it is driven [save gas and engine].

MPG goes down this time of the season because of various factors. tire looses PSI as the temps go down, takes longer to reach optimal operating temperature, winter gas formula, and etc. if you were averaging 2MPG lower than before, check your tire PSI and don't bother with warming you engine. if you have switched your gas from premium to regular switch back. I have made number of attempts to test MPG using 87-91/93 and each time yield about 2MPG better with premium gas [just my experience].

LexBob2

Good point. You get 0 mpg while the car is idling to warm it up.

markrivers

i have a 2011 RX 350 and my average is in the 20's mpg. that is driving 25-30 mile one way with a combination of city and highway.
i can get as high as 25.5 on a a highway (405) without traffic of course.. around 2-3AM

as others have mentioned, there's so many factors to consider in calculating your mpgs.
Driver's attitude seems to be the biggest factor here. on how aggressive one can be on the acccelerator.
Generally speaking, if the driver is the type who races to the next stop sign, then oh yeah he will get a very low mpg.
My brother who borrows our 2011 Prius IV every now and then will get 31mpg on a car that is reported to go 51/48mpgs. I can get a 44-48 in the same car. so there you go.

The OP lives in NY, and today is Winter season.. the mixture in the gasoline tends to decrease the mpgs compared to a "summer" mix.

k9shelly1

This is pretty much average. I have found that if I take a route with fewer stops then I get 17 to 19. My wife gets the 16+ and I am happy with it.

UCSB

Your experience in getting 16 MPG is exactly what I was afraid of when I decided to go with a FWD 450h instead of the 350. It is really easy to come in under the city EPA number. My experience is that a person's specific driving conditions and driving style really have a big impact on mileage. I live in the San Francisco bay area and took my RX for a drive last night. It was late on a Sunday night and traffic was minimal. When I started my hour drive my computer indicated MPG was 30.4, which is about average for my typical usage. I reset it and drove over to another local city, purchased some gas, toured my small town and returned back home. Since driving conditions were perfect for a hybrid (all in town driving with little traffic, speed under 50 MPH), I decided to see what I could do with careful, but normal driving. When I pulled back into my garage the car was reading 42.3 MPG. This was a 39% improvement under ideal conditions over the 30.4 number (which was on the same roads in the same region).

davrober

Well we don't let it warm up. Start it and drive it. Tires are right on the pressure too. My wife says I drive like Fred MacMurry. I don't do jack rabbit starts and I don't I drive her crazy when I drove because Ill see a red light down the road and either use tranny braking or the brakes to make sure I don't have to stop when I get there. Of course sometimes you do hit a stop but this is no where near City out here. Seems to me if your going to put a sticker on your window that says City 18 mpg then thats what it should be . REal city conditions. I know its an epa sticker but as a manufacturer if you know its a fantasy you should either put a disclaimer on it or have the epa change it. I sold Pontiac's many years ago. We had no sticker and they got about 10 mpg, but gas was 35 cents a gallon too not $4.00 which is another rip off. AT 4% avg. inflation for 40 years that would make it $1.68 gallon . We aren't even at 4% avg. inflation last 40 years.Aside from the poor MPG its a great vehicle. I talked to the manager at the showroom . He lives near me and he gets 17-18 out here and one of the service writers here gets 19 with his. 15.5-17 is not acceptable to me. JMHO

Jd1putt

At 16,000 miles my overall Milage on a 2012 RX 450h 25.8. On premium fuel . Lexus must be coasting down hill when they posted their Milage estimates. It's a great vehicle in every respect but real world Milage is well below EPA posted estimates.

dctex99

I am very happy with gas mileage; with over 8,000 miles I have gotten as high as 28.3 on the highway; this trip I just got home from I did a burst of 80 MPH for 65 miles late for a trade show and my overall mileage for 700 miles was right at 27!!