they were toughened up for 2008 to try to be more “real world.” but as with any fixed test plan, you can set up a car to do well on the test. that’s the reason everyone’s going with small turbocharged engines in even large cars and SUVs. the fuel economy test drive cycle doesn’t have these engines using much turbo boost, so the ratings come out pretty good. but then Joe Numpty (who thinks he drives “gently”) buys one, and his driving style of “stomp on the gas until I have to stomp on the brake” turns in lower numbers, and he complains.
it’s impossible for a fixed test to be “real world” representative for everyone. My mother regularly beats the sticker mpg ratings on her EcoBoost Fusion, but I know other people with Fusions and Escapes who have WAY lower average mpg. and the way they drive, I can see why.
In my experience, and that of my family, the EPA estimates are low compared with real-world usage.
Your Mileage May Vary, and I have a clue as to why:
The EPA tests say automatic transmissions get better mileage than manual transmissions, when physics and logic (and personal experience) suggests the opposite. I have been told that the reason for this is that the EPA estimates are based on a driver with a fairly low level of skill. An unskilled driver is better off with a machine making the decision of when to shift, and that outweighs the inefficiency of an automatic transmission.
If all of that is true, then it stands to reason that a skilled driver would get better mileage than the EPA estimate, especially when trying to do so.
fueleconomy.gov says the 1989 Honda CRX HF got 37 city 47 highway/ I got 38 driving back and forth to work (8 miles each way) and topped 80mpg on a 1200 mile road trip, and that car was 10 years old when I got it. My Mom got similar results from that car when she owned it.
Their data only goes back to the mid 80’s, so I don’t know what the EPA predicted I’d get in the 1975 Dodge Royal Monaco Brougham Station Wagon with the 400ci V8 I owned around 1990. I was getting 28 highway and 26 while delivering for Domino’s Pizza.
That is definitely not true. The tests are administered by the automakers themselves per the EPA standards. So long as they’re doing the right drive cycle they can pick whoever they want to drive, and I suspect most automakers pick someone who can drive stick.
The real reason is that things like lock up torque converters allow modern automatics to transmit power very close to as efficiently as a manual but also tend to have more gears (up to infinity with a CVT.) That’s combined with the fact that on cars that are still offered with a stick, the stick is supposed to be the “sporty” option so they tend to be geared lower for zippy handling.
Also, re: the fuel consumption of your cherished vehicles of the past, it’s a very well known phenomenon where we tend to remember only the absolute best tank of gas we got in our old cars and tend to over-remember how much we actually used to get in day to day driving. I know I’m certainly quite guilty of it myself.
As mush as I love a manual transmission, and sure wish this was true, it just isn’t any more. Modern dual-clutch automatics, or the 8, 9 or even 10 gear torque converter transmissions have long surpassed even what a skilled human can do, either in the realm of performance or that of economy. Only reason to have a manual these days is to have more fun, knowing that you’real either giving up performance or mileage for the satisfaction of rowing yourself.
Your vehicle can easily use on the order of it’s own cost or more in fuel in it’s lifespan. 20-30k. Depends on gas prices. As you can imagine, a moderate improvement in fuel efficiency would pay $1000.
Sure, manuals are more fun, but they may not save you money.
Depending on the model, though, standard vs. automatic may be harder to sell hence have a lower resale value. That sporty-looking Mustang or Miata may benefit from the appeal of manual, but the typical driver of a Camry or BMW 5-series sedan or minivan probably is not interested in standard.
As an aside, I noted when I was a tourist in Beijing about 5 years ago that a lot of the scooters were electric. The typical battery pack was about the size of two cartons of cigarettes (appropriate measurement over there) and popped out so it could be plugged in indoors to charge (and remove the appeal of the vehicle to thieves).
the problem comes when scooters share the road with a huge number of SUV-sized vehicles and luxury cars whose drivers have not learned to watch for small vehicles; and the arterial road speeds are typically 45mph to 55mph. Get into congested big city traffic where nobody can get above 30, and big cars can take several cycles to get through a traffic light, and you are in an environment where scooters beat cars all the time. That’s a major reason why they are so popular in old European and Asian cities with minimal expressway options.
Cheap also helps. I remember noting a family of four on a scooter in Naples - dad driving, mama behind him holding the baby, and junior standing on the floorboard in front of dad. No helmets of restraints. Fully loaded like that, it still had no problem climbing the hills in Naples. It was also “teach your child to drive” day, I’m sure. Kids no older than 8 or 9 were taking turns driving scooters down the sidewalks in one downtown neighbourhood.
Famous author Mordecai Richler had a piece once talking about when he was teen in Montreal, some young man in the neighbourhood bought a scooter to get around. He and his buddies would wait til the guy went to sleep each night, then wheel the scooter down the block and joyride all over the place for hours. One day, the scooter was gone. He askd the fellow where it went. “Oh,” he replied. “I sold it. It just wasn’t getting the gas mileage I expected.”
80 mpg? No way. I owned a 1989 CRX and bought it new. I got about 56 mpg (imperial) on my highway trips, which comes out to about 45 mpg in USG, right in line with the predicted fuel consumption.
yes and others confirm they are getting over 50 kpl. Of course it depends on where they live and driving style, those that live in cities with constant stop start will get much less. The 50+ figure is on open roads in the country side.
For starters, here are the EPA driving cycles. Specifically, this is what the EPA highway fuel economy driving schedule looks like. If you want to pinpoint moment-by-moment speeds, there are links to text files on at the main page (first link in this paragraph). The peak speed is only 60 MPH, which doesn’t exactly mimic driving across Nebraska - but the speed varies quite a bit over the course of the test, which will give you substantially lower fuel economy than a constant high speed.
The vehicle is tested on a chassis dynamometer. The rollers under the wheels are steel, but that doesn’t much matter; the vast majority of rolling resistance comes from the tires themselves.
The aero drag is modeled as being entirely due to vehicle speed, but on average, this will be also be true in the real world; some days you’ll have a headwind, some days you’ll have a tail wind.
Bottom line, IME my real-world highway fuel economy seems to pretty closely match what the window sticker says.
Going into how much fuel is needed. Ever light gasoline with a flame (match, lighter, etc.), the initial poof, which is quite substantial, is the vapor that evaporated, so very little is needed to get a good amount of energy out.
If a particular model of car is offered with a manual or an automatic, chances are the top gear on the manual is lower than the top gear on the automatic; this alleviates the need for the driver of the manual to downshift whenever he wants to speed up on the highway, but it also results in worse fuel economy than the automatic.
The EPA fuel economy tests make no assumptions about the skill or judgment of the driver. The rules require the vehicle to stay within a couple of MPH of the prescribed speed at any given point during the test. For shifting of a manual transmission, shift points (and gear selections) are supposed to be the same as what’s recommended in the vehicle’s owner manual. If the owner’s manual doesn’t make any such recommendations, then the tester can upshift at their discretion, provided the EPA doesn’t deem the shift points unreasonable (e.g. an upshift that results in 600 RPM is probably going to be deemed unreasonable). Here’s the relevant fragment of the rulebook:
Well, I had assumed I had made a math error, but my stepfather said he got similar mileage on a similar trip he made each summer in that car.
I was often reaching 80-85mph, and as I said the trip was 1200 miles. I would have been impressed with 50mpg.
The Dodge V8 figures were consistent over a year-and-a-half. It had a “fuel minder system” which was a light that glowed when you were “burning fuel inefficiently”. Drive gently, keep the light off, and you get 26mpg.
Or punch the pedal to the floor and watch the light come on like a star going nova. That was fun too.
I heard that bit about the EPA tests in reference to why automatic transmissions were now standard and manual an option when the opposite used to be the case, and tangentially why cars like the Camaro are designed to be easy to convert an automatic to manual.
I was told manufacturers face a restriction on the average fuel economy of all the cars they sell, and the EPA tests give better results to automatics, so they made automatics cheaper to get more people to buy them, thus bringing up the average MPG of all the cars they sell.
All of my information is a few decades out of date, as I believe it was a 1986 Camaro being discussed. And it may have just been a tale to begin with.
That doesn’t sound totally implausible. Obviously, it’s possible to work out ways to manufacture an automatic less expensively, and the EPA is probably right to count a manual transmission as consuming more fuel. Sure, specific individuals who are experts might get better mileage out of a manual - but the average driver is what the government regulation is trying to improve efficiency for.
Having been a service manager and having fielded customer fuel mileage complaints, I can comment.
You know the phrase YMMV? It probably should be YMWV? (Your mileage will vary) because nobody drives that way as a matter of course.
Over the years I have driven hundreds of cars for a weekend or a couple of days to check out fuel mileage complaints. In all of those test drives I have had car faults on two of them. Every other fuel mileage complaint was directly traceable to poor driving habits.
I have never failed to exceed the EPA numbers on these test drives (the two cars with issues excepted)
The customer reaction was always fun. I had one guy that swore his Hyundai would not exceed 17MPG. I took the car for the weekend and gave it back to him on Monday with an average MPG of 34 (EPA highway of 32 IIRC). At first he didn’t believe me, and then became my buddy always saying hello whenever he came in.
As far as the EPA tests go when they first started they actually drove the cars around Los Angeles on a set route (called the LA loop)
Later they moved the tests to the dyno. The wind resistance is calculated based on real world instrumented runs. At the Volvo (now Ford) test track in Arizona they have a two mile long by about 100 yards wide stretch of asphalt that is flat. As in flat to within 1/4" through the entire surface.
They accelerate the car to a set speed kick it in neutral and record the coast down with instruments. They do this multiple times in both directions to get a real world duplicatable number. From this they can calculate the wind resistance. (BTW this is the calculation Hyundai messed up. They added instead of subtracted or something like that)
