Some of my posts have been for mid-30s -- when road rage meets downtown traffic. But then, I figure that any tank that beats my old Toyota Echo is a good tank.

 

I'm honest, but my numbers don't reflect the inaccuracy of my odometer which is overstating my Tacoma by between 1-2% or between .3-.6 mpg. And in the desire for full disclosure I did not include a partial tank that my wife drove a dismal 23.2 all by her self.

Felt good getting that off my chest.

I wish the non-hybrid database could be combined by vehicle but that data seems more sketchy than the hybrids, by my quick scan anyways.

Seems that are lots of folks with a single entry of either zero or one tank. There are lots of even numbers, like 6 people with one entry of 50.0mpg, and 8 at 30.0mpg, and 10 at 18.0mpg. At each even increment there are people with 45.0, 44.0, 43.0, 42.0 etc. I'm not buying those numbers.

Clearly Jimb1075 with the Civic EX input something wrong at 3.5mpg and 52 miles over 4 tanks? A VW Bus at 1mpg and a Civic HX at .9 mpg seem suspect also. And can a Durango R/T really get only 8mpg over 50,000 miles. Yeah, that one could be real.

 

Mine (for my car - Voltron) are real (and nowhere near hypermiler worthy ). I just had one of my worst tanks ever, and I entered it. I'll enter them all, just like I suspect most of us do.
It's really unfair to the cars, and especially to the potential buyers of them, to skew the data so that they show better MPG than they can get. Many people won't understand what driving-style alterations might be necessary in order to achieve such MPG, but it should be achievable. Dissapointeed hybrid owners would not be a good thing. I believe most of the MPGs I see are achievable, and real, after following this site and many of the owners. Knowing how they drive, how far they drive, and where they drive (gleaned from reading many posts), allows me to conclude the integrity of the folks here is pretty good.

There are the apparent mistaken entries 1 MPG, etc.
There may be a few folks that want to discredit a car by entering in fake low numbers. And there may be the occasional wanna-be-the-leader type that enters in false high numbers.
Overall, I have no reason to doubt the database entries, and believe the MPG curves and standard deviations speak volumes.

 

Does a lower front valance help ??---JOE

 

Lowering the front valance can help or hinder depending on the underside of your car. Lowering the valence adds frontal area, which hurts mileage, but if your car's underside is aerodynamcally dirty and the valence shields some of the underside components from the wind, then if may help improve mileage. My approach would be to clean up the underside with underbody paneling and not to lower the front valence.

On my car, I didn't lower the front valence, but I did change the shape of it.

 

So do you have to add red lights at the rear since itis more than 2 feet behind the rear tail lights?

I must applaud you for your willingness to drive such a unique car and work so hard to increase your mileage.

 

Man. We need to find a grad student with lots of funding and no idea what to do with it, and put that thing in a wind tunnel. Or at least an intensive CFD analysis.

 

My reports are maybe a bit too honest. I always report displayed MPG, which compared to actual MPG is about 4% too low, average over the life of the car - around 10000 km right now.

 

i believe several folks tend to 'cut corners' rather than outright lie about mpg. I have noticed that they put their best mileage for one tank , or do some funky calculation that somehow proves they actually got .2343454325 mpg more.

One fellow actually PUSHED his car around into his parking spot so he could max out his mpg. Another guy used ice and wet towels instead of simply turning on the AC. Some guys go way out of their way to overinflate the tires, use helium instead of air. These things are great and fun to read about, but i think go way too far and do not help us readers want to switch to hybrid.

I believe that these hybrids are NOT the answer, even though we bought one ourselves, hoping it was. It is a big step in the right direction though. I believe plug in hybrids are in fact the next step, then bringing back EVs for city driving the ULTIMATE .

big oil aint gunna allow this , or fight it every step of the way of course. Just because something is a good idea, doesnt mean we can just do it. Too many greedy people will stand in our way.

I myself, ENJOY people who have the guts to admit their prius nets them only 40 mpg . I myself have the highlander 4x4 -and we only net 24mpg , however, its a HELL of a lot better than a non hybrid full bore SUV.

 

Last summer I averaged around 67MPG in my '04 HCH CVT and so far this winter has been around 61MPG. That's calculated miles/gallons.

tomdavie
Last summer I went almost exclusively without AC and sometimes brought ice and a towel for the few hottest days. The results are in my signiture, and the computer cut me short as the calculated MPG was 74.9.
I've always been visible and up front that I'm not driving normally and doing some extreme measures.
I don't think people turn away from hybrids because hypermilers find them easiest to work with. Last spring I hypermiled our Grand caravan (EPA 22MPG) and got above 30 for a couple tanks. Like the hybrid, I don't think it will discourage GC buyers.

Since I made my summer goal in my signiture I've backed off quite a bit. For the past few months I've been taking my cummutes 95% freeway instead of extiting 1/2 way home onto my favorite fuel saving rural highway.

Before last tank I was able to maintan about 60 calculated MPG, mainly by going about the speed limits and DWL. Last tank came out to 58 which is too low so last night I switched back to my rural highway and parked with 67 on the dash, which is probably around 66MPG.
That is what I'd call "mild" techniques and the key is always on.

Another thought-
I wonder how we will be calculating MPG for the up-coming plug in hybrids?
Will it be something like BTU's per mile?