I drive mine normally - without trying any hyper miling tricks. I to coast down to lights to save brakes, but nothing abnormal. My tach regularly gets into the upper ranges once the engine is warmed up, and I do a fair amount of fast highway driving. Around town, if I am not booting the throttle - it seems to shift at about 2800-3000 RPM. I do make it a point not to use the full kickdown unless absolutely necessary (or unless the windows are down, and I want to hear it make its wonderful noises).
On average, I am getting anywhere between 28 and 34 MPG overall (seemingly based on my car's mood at the present time). I can't complain about that at all - it's certanly making the best out of my driving style. I am curious to see what warmer weather will bring - I got it at the tail end of summer last year, and immediately went into winter - which my car seemed not to like too much.
For us, the use is 50% urban, 25% country, and 25% highway. Normal driving; 93 octane gas; no tricky stuff except to limit the highway driving to 65 MPH max. Our individual seat time is split about 50/50 with me hand shifting and my wife on the rubber shift. The overall average is 39.5 mpg.
The first tank after delivery was a disappointing 28 mpg. With every tank re-fill throughout the break-in period (the break-in regimen was "vigorous" but careful) the mpg increased until gradually leveling off between 1000 miles and 1500 miles. At that point I had determined that we were doing about 10% better than EPA across the board, and I stopped calculating. Recently I checked another three re-fills to see if things had changed between summer and now. They hadn't. I'm quite satisfied, and If I wanted better mpg I would be over at the local Piaggio emporium.
I got mine about the same time as unicycle, in May but only have a little over 10% of the mileage ;-). I do mostly highway driving (weekends out) but a fair number of hours in Manhattan. My last tank was a lot of city driving - or sitting and crawling in first gear and sitting - and that, plus the cold weather got me all of 33.2 mpg on that tank. Overall for 12 tankfuls I'm at 42.8 mpg average including the first tank. 44.1 excluding that one (first tank is something of an unknown quantity). Best tankful was 52.1 mpg in October. Always use Premium, usually with ethanol. My driving style might be described as "patient" and I try to keep speeds around 60 on the highway.
Couldn't be happier.
Lifetime on my car is 59.8 US MPG (click on the icon below for details) but mine's a diesel so that's cheating, right? My Canadian colleagues who - unlike me - are into maximizing FE are over 70 MPG US lifetime.
My car has wide tires and OE (Europe) wheels (best idea for any smart) and the cab top is often down, which hurts FE.
Lifetime on my car is 59.8 US MPG (click on the icon below for details) but mine's a diesel so that's cheating, right? My Canadian colleagues who - unlike me - are into maximizing FE are over 70 MPG US lifetime.
It kills me to read posts like this! Imagine getting 80 mpg ... and when fuel prices hit $4-5 a gallon again... oy!
I began a concerted effort to track miles (ODO reading) and gallons for every fill-up at about 3,500 miles last November. I figure the car was through break-in by that time and many samples smooth out individual tank errors. I haven't done anything to the car except wider wheels/tires all the way around. Oil (Mobil 1) was changed at 4,500 and 9,500. I'm now at 10K + miles and have averaged over 41 mpg through the winter across those miles. I expect the mileage to go back up a bit when summer fuel arrives.
I drive conservatively for the most part (but no hypermiling) and travel country roads and freeway (at 60-65 mph) about 50-50. I don't really do any city driving and have a 70-75 mile/day round trip commute.
Last edited by rfernatt; 03-16-2009 at 10:48 AM.
Reason: Edited driving conditions/style
I drive mine mainly city in the winter, with some longer road trips during the summer. And I don't really baby it at all, driving the limit (plus a little maybe), making short trips, waiting in like at the fast food places, and all that.
I don't think saying an average of about 40mpg is out of line for mixed driving. Especially not for a warmer climate, or for more sprawled out cities. I'm getting mid to high 30s with near 100% city driving (short trips, in the snow), mid 40s for longer trips in the summer. My overall average right now is shown below, which includes the break-in period, which is notoriously low.
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