Pure City Driving MPG

[shepd]

Winter hurts your mpg because the car is open loop until the engine warms up. In the summer, that's really fast. In the winter, you could be driving for several minutes with horrible gas mileage. Idling doesn't really help because it's still open loop and it takes a very long time to get the engine warm when it doesn't have a load.

[edmscan]

Originally Posted by shepd

Winter hurts your mpg because the car is open loop until the engine warms up. In the summer, that's really fast. In the winter, you could be driving for several minutes with horrible gas mileage. Idling doesn't really help because it's still open loop and it takes a very long time to get the engine warm when it doesn't have a load.

I just checked my mileage and this is so true. I have gone from a high of 5.4 L/100 km (43.53 mpg) to a low of 9.63 L/100 Km (24.43 MPG). That is with .. very very little highway driving. I hate going on the highway.

That was obviously in the summer and winter respectively. My ScanGauge backs up my thoughts .. mileage is bad bad on any short winter trips.

[Jcp123]

Originally Posted by shepd

Winter hurts your mpg because the car is open loop until the engine warms up. In the summer, that's really fast. In the winter, you could be driving for several minutes with horrible gas mileage. Idling doesn't really help because it's still open loop and it takes a very long time to get the engine warm when it doesn't have a load.

My Echo really doesn't run open loop for very long. A half-mile is the longest it's ever taken for it to heat the O2 sensors enough to run closed loop.