Next month I’m doing a 2,000+ mile road trip, San Francisco to LA to Phoenix (Opening Day!) to the Grand Canyon S & N Rims to Vegas and back home. Here’s my route on Google Maps. On that trip I will do more testing to see if I can corroborate or need to revise those numbers. Theoretically, I should be able to drive to Phoenix, 750 miles from San Francisco, on one tankful.
Aren’t those good MPG values, especially in a rig that is a capable off-roader (for a stock SUV), can tow over 7,000 lbs, and is quite luxurious and nicely appointed?
Those are good numbers even for a small car. But where are you getting those numbers? If you’re trusting your trip computer I have found them to be overly optimistic.
To really know your overall MPG you have to fill up your tank and reset your trip-meter, then drive until the tank is close to empty, then divide the miles on your trip-meter by the number of gallons you put in.
Still it sounds like with that diesel engine you should get some pretty good MPG numbers even in mixed driving.
Pretty much any car can get good economy figures if you take the “live” economy figure at a steady speed.
That doesn’t necessarily reflect real life economy though, the only way to do that is to brim the tank, drive for a given distance (a) brim the tank and record the amount (b).
Then divide a by b. Do that a couple of time and use that figure to estimate range.
The JGC Diesel is definitely one of my favourite looking SUV’s. Particularly the more recent body styles.
But how does it stack up to the VW Touareg TDi? I think they are within a few thousand dollars of one another. Engine and transmission specs are closely matched too. How do the real life mileage and performance numbers match up?
I must confess, in the looks department, I think the VW edges out the Jeep both inside and out.
they’re accurate (they get the info from the PCM, which as a matter of normal operation has to know precisely how much fuel the engine is asking for,) it’s more that the averaging/integration window they use tends to mask tank-to-tank variation.
I usually get my MPG values by the method that control-z mentions, but for the MPG values I reported they are from the car’s trip computer over the course of about 10 miles at each speed.
The old V-10 Touareg TDI is no longer available in California. It was a few years ago, and I test drove it then, a used car example. A friend of mine in Virginia has one and he loves it. Yes I think it is a nicely appointed car but I wanted to “buy American” and so I bought the JGC.
But, damn!, 34 MPG at 65 MPH! And 45 MPG at 55 MPH! Damn.
It’s hard to tell the Chrysler players without a program now, but in 2014, when the Chrysler musical-chairs stop button was pushed post-Daimler, Chrysler — Fiat Chrysler, actually — became part of a Dutch holding company with its HQ in London.
I head out on my road trip next Saturday. First to LA, and then on Monday to PHX for the game (Go Giants!). It’s 750 miles to PHX and I’ll try to make it on one tankful. Hopefully I won’t need to drive much in/around LA.
Do be careful, you do not want to run out of fuel in the desert. Nor do you want to reprime your diesel fuel system ever, but especially not on the road. If in doubt, buy some fuel. BTW, in the desert, fuel stations can be few & far between, less so on the freeway though.
I’m now in Vegas as I write this. Tomorrow we head back home to San Francisco. We got a late start from home at the beginning of the trip, so I drove fast and not at the speed limit. I’ve been at 10-15 over the speed limit on almost all of the open highway miles and I’m enjoying the effortless power, comfortable ride, and good MPGs. So far 1,600 miles since leaving home and a lot of that was cruising at 80, 90, sometimes 95. That’s cruising speed, and at times I was very briefly over 100, 110. For the whole trip I’ve gotten 23MPG. I don’t mean to brag about this, I am happy with my purchase and the car wasn’t cheap.