Fuel Economy

[prime]

What car do you have?
Also, cruise control is less efficient than your foot. You'd know what I mean if you've ever been on a hill.

Care to elaborate? I always understood that maintaining a constant speed regardless of hills meant optimal fuel consumption. Please enlighten.

Edit: Did my own research and you're correct.

Driving over "rolling" terrain, with gentle up and down portions, can usually be done more economically (using less fuel) by a skilled driver viewing the approaching terrain, by maintaining a relatively constant throttle position and allowing the vehicle to accelerate on the downgrades and decelerate on upgrades, while reducing power when cresting a rise and adding a bit before an upgrade is reached. Cruise control will tend to overthrottle on the upgrades and retard on the downgrades, wasting the energy storage capabilities available from the inertia of the vehicle.

-Wikipedia

[113GT]

@Prime

Cruise control is only efficient when driving on a flat road. The cruise control will set a certain speed to maintain that speed, if there is a hill, then it will apply more throtle to keep that speed maintained. If done manually, you can lift off the throttle a bit and deccelerate a little bit and then gently get backup to speed....

this is the art of fuel economy lol

[Gloomfrost]

Whatever you do, don't do any of the 'hypermiling tricks' that you can find lots of info on online. They say the most retarded shit; like turn off your car if you approach a long downhill highway road PFFTTT

[Booter22]

@Prime
Cruise control is only efficient when driving on a flat road. The cruise control will set a certain speed to maintain that speed, if there is a hill, then it will apply more throtle to keep that speed maintained. If done manually, you can lift off the throttle a bit and deccelerate a little bit and then gently get backup to speed....
this is the art of fuel economy lol

half true. cruise control is most efficent when on longer trips as it will maintain a constant speed with less large changes in acceleration and a large ammount of small changes. however the best way to maintain fuel economy is not so much in the art of driving on flat roads and maintaining constant speeds which help but to try and slow and stop less or slow down less as it takes more fuel to accelerate again or to start from a stop so if you can give distance in between to not stop and keep a roll or to accelerate slower you will find you can maintain a better overall fuel economy.

currently my car is at 435 km and just went 1 bar below half. im projecting to get 750 km to this tank or more.. imagine if i had a skyactive

vehicle info:
75W90 motul trans fluid,
0W20 Synth Oil,
AEM Cold Air Intake

current average fuel econ - 8.0 L / 100 KM
Last 4 tanks were 7.7L / 100 KM
All time Best 6.9L / 100 KM

[genericmoniker]

How in the hell.......

Everytime I pass a gas station I smile and thank myself for choosing my car.

[sudz]

Gas light just turned on - 608km on a 07 2 Litre Manual. My "trip computer" says I AVERAGE about 7.5 over the last 20,000km (since the battery was last pulled) Its a load of crap though As I average about 8.0, this tank was better than normal at 7.7l/100km

[RTEnthusiast]

I only got 5.8L/100km city this week. Worst tank in a while.

[Booter22]

i drove the avalanche yesterday.. it was about 12-15L / 100 km, and i filled it up from 1/4 tank and that cost $130.00. made me love my mazda 3 sooo much more.

[distr0]

currently my car is at 435 km and just went 1 bar below half. im projecting to get 750 km to this tank or more.. imagine if i had a skyactive

John, let me know what you end up with as I'm in about the same situation as you except in my car it dropped below the half mark bar at around 410km (avg about 60km/bar [not a real measurement but whatever]. I'm gonna rack that up to having the 2.5 instead of your 2.0. Since I only commute like ~40km/day round-trip, I probably won't be filling up for another week or so.

[aris]

currently my car is at 435 km and just went 1 bar below half. im projecting to get 750 km to this tank or more.. imagine if i had a skyactive

that's awesome ... I wish my 08 got mileage like that...

[sarujo]

You can't go by those blocks - they're inaccurate and I have found they change a different rates occasionally. My last tank I still scored better overall mileage than you but my blocks were down lower than what you report here. ;-) You should be able to do better mileage thou.

I have the same year, motor and trans as you (except for hatch). I also run full synthetic fluids, except I use Redline in the tranny. I wonder if all those mods you have are weighing your car down! ;-) Probably the weighted shifter!

Do you run your tires at 35 PSI as indicated on the door sticker?

currently my car is at 435 km and just went 1 bar below half. im projecting to get 750 km to this tank or more.. imagine if i had a skyactive

current average fuel econ - 8.0 L / 100 KM
Last 4 tanks were 7.7L / 100 KM
All time Best 6.9L / 100 KM

[Kessly Snipes]

I need to find a higher paying job so I won't have to bend over as much at the pumps. ****ing gas companies making record profits and still jacking the price up.

You'll still bend over, you'll just be able to afford better lube!

[Paton]

I'm not that disappointed with my 2.5L fuel economy. I drive on average about 15km over the speed limit. 20-25 over on the major highways. Wish it did a bit better at those speeds...

Avg, 8.9L/100. Best 7.6L

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/rpaton/3

[Impressive]

I'm down to 8.7L/100KM from about the 9.5L/100KM I'd been averaging over the last two years.

I can't believe my fuel economy is actually getting better as my car has close to 200,000km on it and it's still all-original (except the brakes).

[distr0]

John, let me know what you end up with as I'm in about the same situation as you except in my car it dropped below the half mark bar at around 410km (avg about 60km/bar [not a real measurement but whatever]. I'm gonna rack that up to having the 2.5 instead of your 2.0. Since I only commute like ~40km/day round-trip, I probably won't be filling up for another week or so.

UPDATE.. ended up getting 640km out of 48L of gas

[DaveIrwin24]

10.2

[Honva]

Mazda 3 2.0 GS driving in Toronto rush hour traffic most of the time (70% city, 30% highway). Between 8-9L/100km. Not too bad but definitely not as good as some other more efficient cars with 1.8L engines.
Winter close to 9
Summer close to 8
My way to save gas is to look ahead and flow with the traffic and adjust speed to time with traffic lights to minimize stopping. (My brakes still has 8mm after 2 years and 44000km).

[Kessly Snipes]

Mazda 3 2.0 GS driving in Toronto rush hour traffic most of the time (70% city, 30% highway). Between 8-9L/100km. Not too bad but definitely not as good as some other more efficient cars with 1.8L engines.

??

[lobo]

Gotta say that I'm a bit disappointed with my mileage over the past 3 years of owning a Mazda3. I don't get anywhere near what some of the others post on here and I don't know if there's any other way I can change my driving patterns to help lower it. I seem to be averaging around the 10L/100km so somewhere around the 400-430km/tank range.

Are there any recommendations in terms of trying to get more mileage out of the car? I drive on Hwy7 between Weston Rd & Leslie on a daily basis so there's some stop and go traffic with some stretches of 90km/hr driving. 18km each way. I use Shell regular gas too. Considering the car is 3 years old now, would converting to synthetic be of any benefit? Over inflating the tires from what's on the side of the door? Air filter change?

Thanks.

Lobo

[lobo]

Oh here's my fuelly report:

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/lobotiger/3

Lobo

[Hoodzy]

Use Fuelly.

[Booter22]

John, let me know what you end up with as I'm in about the same situation as you except in my car it dropped below the half mark bar at around 410km (avg about 60km/bar [not a real measurement but whatever]. I'm gonna rack that up to having the 2.5 instead of your 2.0. Since I only commute like ~40km/day round-trip, I probably won't be filling up for another week or so.

yea.. i only got 575.. mind you i put my exhaust on monday so the gas i had in there.. lol didnt last long as the car managed to find its way in to the higher rpms a bit but im starting to drive it almost normal again. still at 7.7L / 100 km

[Hoodzy]

Oh here's my fuelly report:

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/lobotiger/3

Lobo

Sorry if I missed it but do you have the city/highway percentage of driving you do? What were you doing when you got 7.9?

[mazdaagain]

I have read that if you keep the RPM as low as possible then you get better mileage. I read 1 article where the guy never had RPM above 2,000 and got around 90 MPG. My 1st 4 tanks on my new wheels were 8.4L/100km, 8.5, 8.2 and the last 8.0. I'm doing an experiment on my current tank ... I'm going to try to never have RPM above 3,000 and see what mileage I get. Max 3,000 RPM means that my top highway speed will be approx 105-110 km/h. I'll update at the end of the tank.

[lobo]

Hi Hoodzy. I would say that my drive is about 30/70 for city/highway driving while commuting to work and back. Highway 7 has some spots where you slow down and sometimes stop so I count some of that plus the side streets around home as city. Can't recall what I was doing when I got 7.9 but I'm sure I had more pure highway driving. I have noticed that when doing true highway driving that my mileage seems to get better...

Lobo