Low Gas Mileage?
 

Hey guys, I don't know if this was discussed anywhere else in the forums, but my 2010 Fit Sport has around 1400 miles on it and I'm only getting around 20-24 mpg on a tank of gas. Is this normal for the first couple thousand miles or is there something wrong? I don't drive crazy either, quite conservative when it comes to the accelerator.

Stop and go driving?

are you getting gas from a busy main brand? or a slow independent? busy main brand is better. independents sometimes do things with their gas to offset the cost to them... and some folks online had stated that a busy gas station is constantly refreshing their supply of gas and not letting it sit (i guess gas slowly breaks down).

you may think you're being conservative, but it's possible you're not what you think. lots of stop and go don't help... lots of idling definitely don't help. if you "wave" your pedal, it won't help either.

by "wave" I mean, you push, let off, push, let off over and over. my dad and brother-in-law do that all the time, I actually get sick to the point of wanting to vomit when they drive. CONSISTENCY is the way. keep the pedal in one position. if you're on the highway and find yourself accelerating and braking again and again because you're too close to the car in front... that is worse. drop back, put your foot on the pedal just enough so you don't gain on the car in front. the less you move your feet, the better the mpg.

Since I've bought my Fit, the lowest I've gotten was 26 mpg (twice)... and that was because i was purposely revving the heck out of it while driving around.

Mine got 34mpg from the day it left the dealer. How long is your commute?

I do about a 50/50 mix of driving and can pretty easily get 29. what killing me is the 20 degree temps. It seems to not want to get good mileage the first 10-15 mins of driving. and in another 15 Im where i need to be.

I drive short trips of 5 miles or less. Weather here is cold. not more than high 20's lately,although 32 is the expected high for today. I'm getting around 26 or so. I also run the defrost most of the time to keep the windows clear. This mileage is under almost the worst possible conditions,so I feel it's reasonable. 20-24 seems a little low. Have you been monitoring the instant MPG meter? That helps me to drive a little more efficiently.

My commute most of the time is just from school and back which is only 5-6 miles away from where I live. Not usually alot of traffic, and I never take the freeway for school. I always fill up at Chevron and I'm pretty consistent on the gas pedal. This week when I fill up, I'll reset the MPG and trip odometer and see what I get.

Thats probably it right there. Short trips and stop lights, you never really get the car to cruising speed, most of the time you are accelerating to reach that speed, you then maintain the speed for a very short period of time, then you are on the brake again.

Yeah... your mpg will improve with more miles on the odo and if you do more highway/cruising driving.

I noticed this same change not long ago when I stopped commuting around 60 miles round trip for work. When I was making the trip to atlanta I got great gas mileage, in the range on 28-34mpg depending on traffic, weather, etc... Now I am commuting maybe 10 miles round trip and I am consistently getting right at 24-26. I drive pretty hard, stop and go, several stop lights and I also have been letting my car run for about 15min in the morning to warm it up.

Wow. And you're going by the FE gauge and not manual calculation? The 09 models' gauge was approx. 4 mpg optimistic. Maybe yours is very pessimistic. Maybe try manually calculating your mileage.

Well that 15 minute warm-up is about 14 minutes and 55 seconds worth of wasted gas.

Letting a car warm up = waste of gas.

The winter months will yield bad MPG.

Wait until the weather gets better in the spring time/summer...if you drive it conservatively there's no reason you can't get 40 MPG on average.

In my 2009 Sport AT I get 39-41 when the weather (temps) are above 45 and when the temps drop and are consistently under 30 I get 32-34 MPG.

there's nothing wrong.

i have similar mileage when i just drive around in town (lots of stop and go, short trips).
the moment i hit county roads or highways, the MPGs shoots up.

so the good news is nothing is wrong.
the bad news is, your MPGs will not increase with your current driving habits.

and yeah, winter MPGs are worse, but you're in socal, so i dont think that's much of an issue.

15 minute warm up? That's a bout 14.75 minutes too long imo.Start the car and drive slowly at first. That blue light will go out pretty quickly. It's also bad for the car to warm it up(idle).

It sounds right to me. Stop and go traffic and a little hotrodding drops your mileage quickly. Try being really good. no hotrodding, 30 second warm-up for a tank of gas. Then see what happens.

My mileage is poor when just going back and forth to work during the week. Less than 10min each way. Only 2 miles on the highway. However, on the weekend, I drive into Oregon all highway. I figured out the MPG difference and found that 1 trip to Portland will increase my MPG enough that the miles I put on for that trip are basically "free" by the end of a tank!
Highway miles will easily get you way over the listed MPG rating for the car. City blows.

Fuel burned in motor vehicles averages out to 17% worldwide if you live in Southern California your car is idling away far more than the average, maybe almost twice as much... If the weather and terrain was the same here as it is in Vista and I was only commuting 10 miles a day I could put my tired soon to be 61 year old ass on a bicycle seat and pedal back and forth, unless there was some reason that It was necessary to use my car... They make very energy efficient bicycles these days and with an average speed of 10 MPH 5 miles is a 30 minute ride.

I drove from Vista to Palomar Mountain today in Ca and I ended my tank of gas with a little over 32mpg after using half a tank of gas last week. So today I only used maybe a gallon or two of gas! Took the 76 freeway and the I-15 and my MPG went up alot. It must be my commute that is screwing with my mpgs. Thanks for all the help guys.

Just my observation but thats normal. Thats considered a short trip. I look at my scangauge and drove 7 miles and got 30 mpg 50/50 mix and 7 stops for stop signs and for every mile at 50 mph the mpg would go up 1 mpg until it reached 40 or so and if you drove 20 miles it would be 36 or higher from what your getting at 5-6 miles. Cooler temps hurt mpg but it warmed up today and I got summer mpg(38mpg) at 40 degrees. When we had 0 to 10 degree temps, I was getting 28-32 mpg.