Where's my MPG going?

[Loren]

Originally Posted by voodoo22

It could be, but I would think you'd have to be an extremely aggressive driver to get numbers like those and then you would know your driving style is causing that extremely bad MPG.

Nah, some people just assume that if they buy a new car that's supposed to get 32 mpg in the city that it will do that no matter how they drive. It's simply not true.

My wife and her MINI Cooper are a good example. The Cooper was rated at something like 26 in the city, and when she bought it, she found that she was getting 23 mpg regularly... exactly the same as she got in her old car (a Saturn SL1). This is because her trips were short and she had some bad habits that she didn't know about.

Fortunately, the Cooper has a built-in mileage computer with functions similar to the ScanGauge. I showed her how to monitor instantaneous MPG to learn where she's really wasting fuel and talked to her about coasting up to lights rather than staying in the throttle and then jamming the brakes to stop. This was before I even knew about hypermiling, so it was just basic stuff I was teaching her.

Now she averages between 27 and 28 with her city driving... mostly on the same 3-mile commute to work. (and the "new" EPA rating for her car is 23 in the city... go figure)

My point here is that most people don't realize how bad their habits are. They think they're driving "normally" because it's "normal" to them.