Chris S

I could take pics of my wife's Jetta TDI showing 100 mpg (instantaneous), but a peak mpg reading over less than a mile doesn't have much semblance to reality.

JonBoy

+1

Down a hill, in cruise, you'll see instances much higher than EPA ratings on any car. This proves nothing.

And 31 mpg is still a lot less than 37 or 39 mpg.

JonBoy

InsideLine participated in a fuel economy run in their Q7 and got the best of the test group with a 30.2 mpg average with an average speed of BELOW 50 MPH.

http://www.insideline.com/audi/q7/2009/200...-and-video.html

Yeah, good luck getting real-life SUSTAINED 31 mpg at 81 mph unless you're going downhill or over a cliff.

dat boi

Are you using European miles?

espelirS2K

My parents bought a 2006 CPO Explorer with the 4.0 V6 and 4WD in late-06, early 07 with 20k on it. They paid like $25k for it or something? It hauled our massive tent trailer (I think it was like 3500lbs dry) without a hiccup. My dad's put like 40k on it in the past few years. The only problem with it was a known radiator leak that he fixed with some of that radiator goo you stick in, and fills holes. Been running fine since.

It also seats 7 (not very comfortably though). Gas mileage is pretty crap, but it's a big V6. Highway it gets about 17mpg, city it's like 13. But surprisingly been a very good SUV

sam_spider

Sorry, I forgot that it is absolutely impossible to achieve higher than EPA ratings on any vehicle.

As my previous post says, in an Audi (or VW for that matter) when you are decelerating, the mpg display shows "---" and not numbers. I'm not sure why 31 mpg at 81mph is so hard to believe.

JonBoy

Sure, but 50% better? That's generally considered impossible, especially when going well over the speed limit of the EPA tests. You can creep along at 40 mph and get great mileage but you're talking about highway speeds (70 mph, at least).

Also consider that InsideLine won the "fuel efficiency" competition with the other journalists and they didn't even hit 31 mpg on the highway!

I don't doubt for a second that you've hit 37 or 39 mpg INSTANTANEOUS but I guarantee you've never sustained 37 mpg on a trip of any significance.

exb00st

http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog...-new-york-to-dc

It's quite easy to beat MPG ratings. A very steady foot, no traffic and flat roads are all you need. I've been able to get 5-10 MPG better than the ratings in most of my cars.

sam_spider

My drive to and from work isn't highway (70+) speed, it's all rural roads and 45 - 55mph limits. The pic I posted was taken 2 months ago and was just an example, it is not with my foot off the gas or anything else, it is at a constant speed.

35 is achievable, but it takes a lot of work, too much work to be honest, but every once in a while I find it kind of fun to see how high I can get a tank to go. I probably should have said I can achieve 35 average, but I do not do it all the time, it's boring as hell driving that slow and taking the most direct route to work to get it.

The 39 figure was during a trip to Florida, not to Wisconsin, and it was during a flat part of the trip, it was not the entire 1300 mile trip.

JonBoy

Sure, but not by 50%, as your link clearly shows. They exceeded highway ratings by about 25%, give or take.

My wife's Civic, in cool or moderately warm weather, will easily hit and sustain 40+ mpg while only rated for 36 mpg on the highway. We've hit nearly 43 mpg a few times, over a 160 mile pure highway trip with a moderate number of hills.

However, again, I'm roughly 16% over EPA estimates. Even what you posted wasn't anywhere near 50% higher.