if that was miles, that would be my average. is that all city? or are you chasing madmax around the thunderdome?
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This thread has really confused me. My first tank, which was 95% city driving (i'll post a google map if you don't believe me) was an average 33.9 mpg. I'm driving a used 04 automatic, yes automatic 4 speed. I drive it mostly to school which is 14 miles with 1-2 lights per mile. My hypermiling isn't perfect, and the car still needs an oil change, new spark plugs, hub bearings, yada yada. I'm expecting to eventually average close to 40 with mostly city driving. I'm not saying this to "troll" the forum, I just wanted to share my experience. I don't know if the newer aveos are different and every car is different so I'm not trying to discredit anybody or start anything. I'll keep everyone posted as I keep trying to squeeze more out of every tank.
Don't let me scare you off, you have no reason to defend yourself :D
What is your drive like?
My last tank averaged 24mpg, all city, in the city of chicago. I just moved from oregon. That was all stop and go heavy starts and stops with the AC on, average speed was probably 15mph. Not bad considering the conditions. The car is in excellent mechanical shape with fresh tune up parts withing the last 5k miles.
I'm not scared... yet :O
It's between 35-45 mph posted speed limits, with slight hills but nothing like west coast roads. Traffic when I go to school is light, when I leave it is heavy. The average light cycle is roughly 30-60 seconds ish, so I can usually time a lot of them.
I know hypermiling gets a bad reputation from the people who use it as an excuse to break the law (running red lights, stop signs, speeding etc.). I don't do that stuff cuz its dangerous, stupid, and I can't afford to pay for any tickets right now, I have a car to maintain :)
I dont like hypermilers because while it is ok they are doing 62 in a 65..
all the other people doing 65 in a 65 cut in front of me preventing me from going faster than 65...
of course pa is stuck with a lot of 2 lane highways.
you mileage sounds like your drive sounds not much like "city" though, at least not my city driving..
Yeah I haven't been in a true city yet since I started hypermiling. I honestly don't know how much I could do to save gas in a city like Chicago or Seattle or New York or name your own city. Detroit isn't a big deal since everyone has pretty much left anyway so there is no traffic.
lmao, I hear some of the houses there are cheaper than dirt as well, true?
I still think some of you are using imperial gallons and not US gallons...
See: http://www.tdiclub.com/misc/conversions.html
most americans (including me) are not smart enough to calculate imperial gallons by mistake..
the pumps here pump 1 gallon, my aveo takes @ 10 to fill. I get (typically) 320-340 miles per tank..
I have never heard of an imperial gallon :D
We used imperial gallon in the 60 up to 77-78 now it's Liters here
If you are in the market for a house, Detroit is a great place to buy...so yes they are dirt cheap. The key is to look for one of the many short sales or foreclosures in the area.
Updated my sig with the latest mpg on my car but it hasn't shown up yet so just to update: I'm averaging 35.5mpg. This is 90-100% city driving. I stay away from the highway because it reduces my gas mileage believe it or not. And I just got a few bucks so I can finally get a little work done on Scarlet.
it might be your driving style that affects highway numbers, you need to torque convertor to lock, and be in the efficiency curve.
i think it is "faster" than the typical speed for most cars that you ecomodders drive.
I personally can get up to 35.5 mpg if it is all highway if i stay below 75.
I may have to talk to my mechanic about that torque converter. It used to engage at exactly 47 mph with light throttle applied on flat roads. Now, it doesn't know when to engage, and if I do find myself on the freeway I try to hover around 60 mph. The torque converter won't lock in unless I'm pushing at least 30% throttle even at 60 mph. I don't know why it started doing that, but as I said, I'll be asking my mechanic.
How does yours behave?
mine behaves exactly how i want it to, because it is a manual.
Trade ya + I'll throw in some freshly baked cookies.
how many cookies?
How many can you eat? I'll even give you the choice of what kind.
I like peanut butter cookies...
Attachment 4400Attachment 4400Attachment 4400Attachment 4400
A dozen for you
Thank you!!
Well I'm on my second Aveo. My 2004 was a stick shift base model with no AC and sadly I did no fuel mileage tracking. I bought an 08 Aveo5 fully loaded with the 15 inch wheels, auto trans and AC. It now has 92,000km on it and I have tracked mileage religiuosly. I drive an almost 50/50 mix of city and hwy and get between 9.4 and 9.8 L/100km. Even on 100% hwy tanks its 9.4 but my hwy speed is 115km/hr. I have recently switched to non ethanol fuel and will see if that helps. Unfortunately I had to switch to premium to get non ethanol.
Glad you like aveos so much. what happened to the 04?
Not too bad, 24-25 mpg mixed is about right, if you went from 70-75mph to 55mph you would see a large gain on highway miles, but no one including myself drives at 55mph on the highway (Florida highways are about 70-75mph). If you are using the A/C a lot as well, your mileage is pretty good.
Too bad there isn't an appropriately priced electric car. The EV1 was but we all know what happened to that car. The leaf is ok but the price is again too high and quantity limited. The volt is awesome but about 10-15k too much $$. Converting your current car to electric is doable but to make it have a decent daily commute range for most people your talking about and easy $15k plus your labor and no warranty to convert it yourself. If I understand correctly the whole purpose to most people of an electric car is mostly about economics aka saving money. Being green is nice but saving green in my wallet is really my motivation to get off of gas. My point is the costs of converting a car to a feasible electric car are too great of a $$ investment with a very long time to break even. Even a good hybrid takes about 80k miles to break even with the higher up front costs at the current price of gas.
Not to start a debate or anything, but in reality an electric car is no better than a gas powered vehicle in way of being green. But money wise, they should become cheaper in the next couple of years, but if energy costs continue to increase then there is no point.
Well the green part is an interesting debate. Sure they produce less emissions while running the real pollution issue is disposing of the batteries afterwards. Lead acid car batteries are currently recycled and the lead is used in making new car batteries, unfortunately lead acid batteries weigh too much and don't hold enough power to be effectively used on a massive scale for most cars. More of the energy from gas goes to wasted heat through the exhaust or through the radiator then actually goes to rotational power to make the car move. Then there is the energy from gas that goes directly towards friction and wearing the engine out. Electric motors have both wasted heat and friction but at a substantially reduced levels. In addition electric motors are in their peak efficiency range during their entire operating range, where gas motors have sweet spots where they produce the most power per unit of gas. These sweet spots are why gas engine technologies such as variable cam timing, variable compression ratio, and vtec have been used. Plus producing power on a massive scale is often, not always, more efficient then on a micro scale. Massive scale being power plant as an example and micro scale being a small portable generator as an example. Anyway the point is the cost savings are realized through the efficiency of mass energy production and the substantial reduction is energy being wasted in the forms of friction and heat out the tailpipe and through the radiator. A gallon of gas here costs $4 as of 8/6/11, I drive in the city and might be able to go 21-23 miles on the gallon. In other words it costs me $4 in gas to go about 22 miles. People who have nissan leafs or who have converted the gas cars to electric don't pay nearly that much per mile. A full charge on a nissan leaf is about $2 to $4 depending on the utility rates and they claim to go 100 miles on a charge, reality is more like 70 miles. So that $0.057 per mile at the $4 per full charge and $0.028 per mile at the $2 per mile charge. Those costs per mile vs the $0.18 per mile I pay in my aveo getting to work. That means my commute could be 3 to 6 times cheaper in a leaf then my aveo. Plus no oil filters, air filters, spark plugs, spark plug wires, timing belts, oil, ect as maintenance. Plus there are less parts overall to go bad like O2 sensors, cats, gaskets & seals, ignition coils, ect. There will be different maintenance items and parts, but the over all cost to repair and maintain should be less. If I could buy an new electric car, comparable to the leaf, for the price of a new civic, corolla, or aveo I would.
Indeed, besides the battery's and such, you still have to produce the power needed for the cars, and roughly 50% of the power produced in the US is coal power and a decent percentage in natural gas as well (may be more efficient in the long run, but still not 100% green). I just took a course on all of this stuff haha, I just get pissed off when Nissan shows their commercials about the leaf saving polar bears and shutting down gas stations, it is a load of $%%$. I think the way to go green is to build a car with the ability to capture all of the carbon that is released from emissions and is able to store it, along with increasing MPG's as high as they can go. It may be cheaper after a while in the electric car, but polar bears will still die anyways :0
Though on the other hand, the cleaner the air gets, the warmer it gets in theory (less reflective substances in the atmosphere to reflect the heat from the sun). Everyone wants to get all of the "bad" substances out of the air, but they do not want to sweat their asses off when they are gone :D
The only thing that would scare me on an electric car is the cost of the battery's, they must cost more than the car :D You have no choice but to go to the dealer and buy them/have them installed, the bill would scare me to death along with the poor polar bears lmao
For whoever it was that asked, I traded in the 04 Aveo5 stick shift for the 08 Auto loaded with AC. I drive too fast and use the AC all summer so I am not disappointed by 24-25 avg Miles per gallon. I am hoping to see another 1 or 2 Mpg when I install the CAI, underdrive pulley, timing belt, plugs and wires, and the use of non ethanol fuel.
Its interesting that oil is at $87 a barrel and yet gas is about $4 a gallon. In 2008 oil was about $147 a barrel and gas was $4 about gallon. Anyone else notice that when oil goes up the cost per gallon goes up quickly as "a result" but it never really comes back down. Its also interesting to hear reports of studies that say that $4 a gallon seams to be the breaking point for people where they will drastically change their habits/life to reduce their gas purchase. Anyway the reason I want one is I believe they will over all produce less pollution, which is nice, and will be more insulated from the rising cost of gas, my main reason. I am in Illinois now and there is a coal powered plant nearby, yet in oregon my previous state there was so much rain last winter that they had to shut down some of the power plants because hydro was producing way more than they could even use.
I was thinking about that the other day as well, oil dropped off big time but gas prices have stuck around where they have been. Compared to a couple of years ago, I could understand a steady price increase over time due to demand (places like China are burning through more and more energy overall) but the fact that those prices have not moved an inch is a joke. I do not drive very much, maybe 200 miles at the very most a month so it does not really matter to me, but for others that drive hundreds of miles a week, that is bad.
Lefty, if you drove slower you could get 29-29mpg easy :D But I know how that is haha, you should see an improvement with what you listed though.
I personally dont think new cars, nor electric is the way to go, cars from the late 80 early 90 were much much lighter, and still "Safe" they could be bought cheap, driven hypermiled in order be driven cheap, etc. Even electric versions of these cars with newer technology would be better than converting a heavier new car.
ideally, my friend built a vw beetle from the 60s. he converted the engine to run on two cylinder, and got 60-70 mpg. He didnt even go as "light" as he could as he converted using upsized jugs. He changed the gearing in the transmission to keep it quick enough for highway use, as well as get to keep speed on the highway (slow up hills though). And it all cost him less the $3000.
Well I think its cool that he did that, but VW bugs wouldn't be an ideal daily commuter for most people today. Most people today have certain minimum expectations for space, comfort and ammenities and safety that a bug can't provide. Although it does sound like a nice bug. Any chance you could post some pics? I agree cars from the late 80s and mid 90s were well built and light especially the civics. But it is the safety issue that you mention why cars of the same class and size are heavier now. Its not that the cars from the late 80s and mid 90s were unsafe but that the safety standards have increased. Thats part of the reason the "belt line" of cars has increased, to meet newer safety standards. The belt line is the level off of the ground at which the sheet metal transitions to glass for the side windows. I personally don't like the look of the increased belt lines nor the reduced visibility they produce. Plus its annoying that I can't comfortably put my arm on the edge of the door with the windows open. Want an example of this compare the 2012 civics to the mid 90s civics. If it wasn't for the fact that my car has low miles, 59k, or the fact that it is in mint condition, without a scratch or dent and a perfect interior, hadn't had all required maintenance just done I would sell it and buy a 95 to 2000 civic 4 door 5 speed. But most of those car are well worn by now and have faded paint, dents, some rust and would probably need a lot of catch up maintenance. Sadly they would be quicker than my aveo, get better mpg and be more reliable with ultimately better resale.
ive got a 2009 auto aveo ls sedan. ive been averaging about 17 mpg, and i dont drive it hard. wtf is wrong with my car?!
What is your normal commute like?
they're all city miles, normally without air conditioning, but i still think that 17 is a pretty low number.
Try inflating your tires to at least 38 & run a few tanks of high octane with some fuel cleaner (Techron works well - there are a couple others that do a pretty decent job)
Change your air filter & if you can, change your spark plugs too - you can put the cheapies in (copper) if that's all you want but you can also put irideum in (debateable if it affects mileage any better than the copper but they last longer)
That should easily take you to the mid 20's maybe closer to 30 if your lucky