Honda Fit EX, EX-L CVT average Fuel Economy poll

There are 3 different Fuel economy Polls.
One for all manual transmission Fits EX or LX
One for EX and EX- L CVT Fits
One for LX CVT Fits

PLEASE vote only in the poll appropriate to your model and transmission.

Please vote only after you have put at least 1000 miles on your car and have an average based on at least 3 fill ups. Do not post your best tank or your worst tank, but your overall average.

Let's see whether the EPA estimates accurately predict real world fuel economy.
Will the LX CVT get better fuel economy than the EX and EX-Ls?
Will the CVT Fits get better fuel economy than the manual transmission cars?
This poll will tell, but only if people post accurate numbers based on multiple tankfuls and manual calculation (miles driven divided by fuel used)

Those with fuel economy of more than 42MPG or less than 32MPG please make a post below with your actual fuel economy and an reason for your good/bad fuel economy.

NOTE ON CALCULATING AVERAGE FUEL ECONOMY
1. Fill car up with fuel and write down odometer reading or reset trip odometer
2. Drive car at least 1000 miles and keep track of number of gallons of fuel purchased at each fill up
3. Fill car up again and calculate total miles driven and the divide by all the fuel you put into the car.
DO NOT use car's computer calculated fuel economy reading
DO NOT take 3 different fill ups and average

 

My trip computer tells me I get between 41-43 mpg for most of my commutes to work. I get about 19-23 mpg on my short couple mile trips to the gym. Factor in quite a bit of uphill driving, a couple Sport mode driving, and those short gym trips ... I've been getting about 35-36 mpg on each tank. So far though... just been two tanks.

 

I've got about 2000 miles so far and I'm solidly getting 34-35 MPG each tank. 34.6 to be exact. I also confirm this with my own math each fillup and in my experience the trip computer is pretty spot on.

Having the instantaneous readout and the green/blue eco lights really does reinforce better driving. I was getting like 28 in my GD3 lol.

I'm also interested in how many people use the econ mode. I've found I can get better or at least as good fuel efficiency without it because I can get up to speed quicker from a stop and then pulse and glide to maintain. Only time I turn econ on is on the interstate with the cruise set.

Also, I just finished my first tank of no ethanol gas. I noticed absolutely no difference in fuel efficiency in the GK with no ethanal vs. E10. In the GD3, no ethanol was almost 20% better. So for the GK, I'll be sticking with E10 since its cheaper.

 

Question: should people cite their car's readout, or ONLY their own calculation based on actual fillups/miles driven?

 

Please calculate an average based on at least 3 fill ups.
Do not post or select the computer displayed fuel economy.

 

This poll might have a bit of an apples/oranges problem as the trip computer has consistently been 5% over-ambitious for me and some others. I'm measuring using an app (aCar) and an online (fuelly.com) tool -- which calculate the same way and run long-term averages by accumulating total miles and total gallons.

If some are using more precise calculations from miles and gallons measurements and others are using the not-so-accurate trip computer, the results will be a bit off.

EDIT: TCroly has addressed my concern. Hopefully this will be read and heeded before pollsters enter a response.

 

Yea figures. I'll see what fuelly says when I fill up after work today, as I track on fuelly too.

 

Just a footnote on my mileage entry. I have 4 fill ups. Note that I had one tank of gas where I disabled the ECON button. That had a big factor in my mileage as the mileage for that tank of gas dropped from an average of 34 MPG down to 29. If I remove that mileage from my overall to date my mileage pops back up to over 34 MPG on average with over 1000 miles driven. Note that none of the display unit's mileage have been accurate for me - always on the high side by 2-4 MPG...

 

My work commute is about 30 miles each way and it has about 5 spots each way, in the form of lights or stop signs. I drive about 52mph on 55mph posted back roads. There is a lot of hills on my drive and i average over 40 REAL mpg each way. You can check my fuelly for more info

 

Wow. I drive very frugally (grandma-like), end up with 36 MPG average over somewhere between 10-15 tanks, and still 64.7% of the others are getting better than I'm getting. I don't imagine that there is much else I can do to drive differently, so I must be paying in lower MPG for the hilly drive that I have, with some of these hills being very long inclines. Also a lot of times where I'm forced to lose momentum to somebody pulling out in front of me suddenly because these hilly curvy back-highways that I must take every day are just that way. Then during the weekends I find myself needing to go take more short trips to this store then that store then eating out and such which murders the score.

Separate issue (not related to my musing above): I wonder, as far as methodology for those who aren't tracking on Fuelly or something similar whether people are just saying" I got 41 this tank and 36 that one, so I'll average those two scores" rather than taking the total miles driven over several tanks divided by the total gallons replaced for the same interval and doing a single division of that. Averaging individual scores isn't as good as using multi-tank totals because if you got 35 MPG on a whole tank but then got 45 for a short trip and then decided to fill up when the tank was only 1/4 down from full, the average MPG would not really be the average of 35 and 45.

Fuelly and aCar and other tracking apps do correctly calculate the "lifetime average" using a single "total miles" and "total gallons" rather than averaging the individual fill-ups.

 

First, keep in mind that everyone's diving conditions are different. You might be doing as well as possible for the traffic, terrain and speeds that you are subject to. However, I think what many people don't realize is that every time you even touch your brakes, you are losing fuel economy. When you put momentum into the car, you want to use all of that momentum and not waste it by braking. Some people can do this very well (at the expense of frustrated drivers behind them) and other people have no idea what I am talking about, and hit their brakes every few seconds and cannot imagine diving any other way.

I agree with your point about averaging averages.
Average fuel economy is derived from tracking the amount of miles you drive divided by fuel you put in your car. While that may seem obvious, it is not the same as taking 3 tank averages and averaging them.
For example:
Lets say these are three tank averages:
40MPG (300 miles that used 7.5 gallons)
30MPG (300 miles that used 10 gallons)
20MPG (300 miles that used 15 gallons)
If you looked at this and said, I got 40MPG, 30MPG and 20 MPG and this should average 30MPG, you would be wrong!
If you add all the miles it is 900
if you add all the fuel it is 32.5 gallons
900 miles divided by 32.5 gallons equals 27.7MPG
So recognize that you cannot just average your averages. You must take all the miles driven and divide by all the fuel used to come up with an overall average. Fuely.com does this for you.

Now, if you always put in the same amount of fuel each time. For example if you always full up as soon as the low fuel light goes on, then the average of averages works out correctly, but if the amount of fuel you put in the tank varies between fill ups, then you must calculate it as shown above.

 

PBP Ex-L CVT.

Quite a number of mods installed but I think the most significant would be the dynamat adding weight to the car.

On my most recent fuel up and trip, I did about 80% highway 20% city driving around California "adventuring". Lots of I-5 and 101 with a mixture of national forest curvy road driving.

333 miles out of the tank with 5 miles left according to the range. AC on the entire time. Being in SoCal summer heat, I haven't turned off my AC.

Fuelly says I got 38.9 mpg. Interestingly, the radio trip info computer also says 38.9 mpg for Trip A.

Not bad.