I got a good deal on a 2006 HCH ($9200) with 78,000 miles.

Car runs great.

My daily commute is 25 miles. Half is two-lane country road, half is 55mph highway.

There are about eight places where i have to stop or slow down.


I drive like a reasonable 50 year old - 9 over the speed limit, let the car slow down all the way to the stoplight.

Mileage is right at 40MPG on most tanks. Worse when i'm in the mountains (western NC) and slightly better (42 mpg) on long highway runs at around 75 MPH.

I have no battery recal issues and I don't know what, if any , software updates have been done.

How does this fall into the norms?

 

40 seems a touch low but not heinous.

top 3 things to come to my mind are tires (how inflated are they and how low is the rolling resistance of those tires), how often is the battery doing a forced regen, and just how 'reasonable' is your driving technique.

look at your instantaneous fuel consumption display doing 75 and look at it again doing 55 on the same road. i realize 55 feels painfully slow compared to 75 (and you may experience a lot of bad feelings from other drivers) but i bet you get 10 mpg better at 55.

also, it only takes a little stop-n-go thrashing in town (especially short cold trips on weekends) to totally trash all the great mileage you get on the open road.

just my 2 cents

 

Tires are inflated to 44 PSI

The battery has not done a forced REGEN in the 8000 miles I've had the car.

I'm not all that interested in getting better gas mileage. I just want to know if my car is behaving as it should for it's age and my circumstances.

 

I sounds like your HCH2 is running good. I normally get about 50 mpg, but then I have driven one for 4 yrs.. You have to become familiar with the driving system in this auto. Sounds like you have the ideal conditions for your HCH2, so enjoy it. H

 

That is spot on mileage. The lifetime average MPG over 70K miles for my 07 HCHCII is 40.1 with a calibrated speedometer and 16" tires.

One of the things to watch for is that the 15" tires cause the speedometer to read high. It is great for the ego that the car appears to return high MPG numbers, but that is simply because of the difference in the RPM of the wheels.