Love my 2010 Fit Sport w/auto trans. Perfect daily driver!
Always thought I should be getting over 30mpg but average about 25. It's in a good state of tune. Spark plugs about 30K old.
Is my experience typical? What kind of mileage do you get?
Thanks,
Mo

 

I have the exact same car as you. My lifetime average (four years and a bit over 20K miles) is 38.5 mpg. On highway trips in the summer I get >40 mpg. In the winter, which is cold but not extreme where I'm at (lows to around 0F, highs 20-40F), efficiency falls 5+ mpg.

Your efficiency is going to be affected by speed, the amount of weight you carry, the rolling resistance of your tires (related to tire model, inflation pressure, and alignment), and the state of your engine/transmission.

 

My lifetime average (11 years, 125 000 km on the Fit) is 27.6 MPG (8.5 l/100 km).

We have cold temps for about 6 months each year. I also drive in trafic from work everytime I go. I don't beat that much on my car, but I'm not a gentle driver either.

Also have wider tires (205), which might not help.

 

I've only had my Fit for a few months but I'm around 27 overall, better of course on highway. I have lots of hills around me, and yes, stop lights as well which take a toll.

 

I've had my 2011 fit sport (automatic transmission) for a for a month and a half and I've been getting 27 MPG. Even though the western Massachusetts winter is not the greatest for fuel economy, I was expecting much better than 27. I used to get 30 MPG in a 2014 Nissan Rogue AWD and my driving habits are as efficiency-conscious as they could possibly be.
I'd appreciate it if someone could let me know if my hunch is right or wrong. The dealer I bought from first recommended that I try premium fuel and get the RPMs up on the highway. I did, and it brought me from 24.5 (yuck!) up to 27. I feel like I shouldn't need premium fuel just to get barely respectable fuel economy on a compact car designed around efficiency. I went back to the dealer and they essentially shrugged their shoulders and told me to go to a honda tech. The salesman suggested that identical cars (same model and year) will have variance in MPG due to manufacturing differences. He showed me a chart from fueleconomy.gov that made it look like I have one of the most inefficient 2011 fits on the road.
My fit is a particularly clean one on paper: 67k miles and comprehensive records of service by a honda dealership at all the right intervals. Spark plugs were torqued when I bought the car. Tires are sumitomo HTR A/S in stock size. Given that some people are getting high 30s on this same car, I feel like something is wrong. Am I crazy or does this make sense?

 

I commented above with the efficiency I see in my 2010 Fit Sport A/T, but will add that I've never used premium fuel. Some people swear by it.

In a different fuel efficiency thread not that long ago I provided more detailed information about the history of my car, which I know well since my brother owned it from 2012 to 2020 (and approximately 80K miles) when I bought it from him and have since added 21-22K miles over four years. As I said above, my lifetime average is 38.5 mpg whereas my brother and his wife averaged 34.3 mpg (we both love spreadsheets!). So different people getting >10% different combined fuel economy in the same car.

The Googles tell me that the 2014 Nissan Rouge AWD was rated 25 city/31 highway mpg. The 2011 Fit Sport A/T is rated 27 city/33 highway mpg. So, it looks like your driving style put you at the top end of expected Rouge efficiency and at the bottom end of expected Fit efficiency. Since your ownership of the Fit has (so far) only been during the winter, and it's been pretty cold in MA for most of that time, I wouldn't jump to too many conclusions yet. I would want to see what the car can do in temperate conditions with non-winter gas on a long highway trip. One thing to consider is that at a 2011 with 67K miles has not been driven much. Did that happen because the car was used exclusively for short trips (generally not great for the car) or because it was used infrequently for long trips? If the car was mostly used for short trips then the advice you received to drive it more aggressively (for a while) is not bad. As my dad would say, you might just need to "blow the cobs" out of it.

I'm not sure I believe that manufacturing differences account for more than a tiny percentage of observable fuel efficiency variation between different copies of the same model of (modern) car. To use myself as an example, I have exceeded the EPA efficiency on each of the 10+ different cars I've owned plus the 20+ different cars I have rented over the years. A few years ago I got 12.5 mpg driving a heavily-loaded 20-foot U-haul (rated at 10 mpg) halfway across the country. It seems unlikely that I keep ending up in the highest-efficiency example of so many different brands and models.

Instead you want to look at all the same factors that have affected fuel economy for a century: speed, fuel chemistry (winter vs summer), air temperature, road conditions, tire pressure, wheel alignment, weight in the car, properly tuned and maintained engine, transmission, and valve adjustment (on a Fit), etc. The spread of reported efficiency you see on a website like fueleconomy.gov is almost completely explained by different people, driving in different ways, in different conditions.

 

Premium fuel is not recommended in the Fit. Not necessary and waste of money.

 

I noticed that my engine was significantly quieter on premium fuel. I probably won't use it exclusively, maybe once in a while. I've discussed this with a mechanic friend who uses premium on his honda element and it seems like it can do some good, although it's not at all necessary.
That same friend said 27 MPG is about what he would expect for this car. Disappointing, but I hope it improves as the weather warms up and I get a few more chances to put the engine through its paces.

 

My average mpg showed 34.8 mpg for the last tank, but when i did the manual calculation it came out to 36.9 mpg? Usually these mpg gauges are a little optimistic, but this time it underestimated my mileage. I used the same gas pump and 2 clicks like I always do. How is everybody else's manually calculated mpg vs the onboard gauge? I have a 2013 Fit Sport in auto transmission btw.

 

I can discern no pattern in the relationship between what the car efficiency gauge tells me and the pump calculation. Sometimes the car reads high, sometimes low. Sometimes they're essentially identical (e.g., 40.1 vs 40.2). The two readings are generally within approximately 2 mpg of each other as you saw.
I also have an Ultragauge that can be calibrated to produce the same estimate as the pump calculation (within the error of having to use different pumps at different gas stations on long trips).

 

When I was on the 185s I was averaging around 35mpg now that I have the 205s I'm averaging around 27mpg, but the comforts of the 205s is night and day compared the skinny 185s