I am interested in what is causing this. Any progress with the dealer?

 

Oh, I'm sorry, I meant the air filter under the hood for the ICE!

But I'm sure with our conditions lately both the ICE and the Cabin air filters should be changed.

 

Sorry all... we've been in China. We only got back Wednesday night... so I haven't had time to take take the car to the dealer. I'm hoping to get it in on Monday.

 

Marianne,

Please let us know what you find out. I do get a little worried when the positive folks on this forum start to get discouraged. I'm also starting to wonder what Arizona does to hybrids.

Best Wishes and welcome back.

 

Just out of curiousity's sake...have you recently had the oil changed?

Many dealers use 5W-30 or even 10W-30 as a standard oil. But the Altima Hybrid calls for 0W-20 (same as Honda) and for "warm and hot climates (pg 9.2 of manual)" you can use 5W-20 if 0W-20 is not available.

Especially as the weather cools, and even more so for short trips, oil that is too heavy will contribute to poor fuel economy.

 

I am 100% certain that a thicker grade oil will reduce fuel economy. I lost 6 mpg in my saturn sl when i went from 5w30 to 10w30

 

Very interesting theory... because YES we did get an oil change pretty much just before our MPG disappeared. We took our car to a different dealership than the one we purchased from because Nissan of Orange is being investigated by the feds for a huge illegal loan scheme.

Oddly, though, our MPG has returned to normal. I kept driving the car... and physically didn't have time to get to the shop... and as mysteriously as our MPG vanished (through two tanks of gas!) it returned on our last fill up.

I got gas at the same station for the two bad tanks... and I'm wondering if the problem wasn't something as simple as someone selling cheap gasoline. We only buy Tier 1 by intent... but I don't really have any way of knowing what a gas station fills their wells with... so I made it a point to buy gas at a different station and miracle of miracles my MPG came back.

 

if i might make a suggestion..........do you usually run 80MPH? it's been well documented that for miles driven above 60MPH you are going to see a decrease in your FE.

 

We did several drives back and forth between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I fully agree that driving around 60 raises your MPG... but we were surprised at how well the car did crusing at 80 MPH. We were typically able to log 35-36 MPG at 80... and I'd much rather get the trip done in 3/4s the time than get an extra 1-2 miles MPG in highway driving.

 

That is not possible - both of those grades have the same weight at normal engine temperature, the only difference is one flows slightly more freely on cold startup.