Excellent Fuel Economy

LPSISRL · Mon Sep 09, 2013 1:18 pm

OK, I tried to setup ideal conditions just to see how good my fuel economy could be on my 2011 SLS FWD CVT. Here's what I did:

I was traveling down Rt. 13 on Virginia's Eastern Shore after watching the NASA rocket launch from Wallop's Island. (really cool!) Early morning, temperature about 65 F. It's a pretty straight and smooth, 55 MPH with slow-downs to 50 and 45 as you go through some small towns. Not too many, so not too many stops to hurt the mileage. I believe I had the windows down, sun roof open and the A/C off. I reset my Average Fuel Economy while I was cruising at 55 MPH so I did't have to recover from a stop. Believe it or not, it stayed on about 45 MPG for about 10 miles until I had to slow and then had a stop light. Long story short, after about 55 miles, the Average Economy was still 40.9 MPG. Going up as I cruised for longer periods and going down when I had to accelerate from a stop. Not bad. For the tank, calculated, I got 33.3 which was a mix of city, normal highway and the Eastern Shore setup.

I was pretty impressed to break the 40 MPG barrier over what I would say was a pretty good distance. (even if it was on the liberal computer-generated display)

BxKizashiS · Mon Sep 09, 2013 8:29 pm

i think the mpg on the Kizashi sucks, the most ive gotten doin only highway, 39 miles back and forth was 32mpg (and that was in a 2 month period).. but on a regular now i get like 24mpg

WESHOOT2 · Mon Sep 09, 2013 11:03 pm

Last tank 29.6 mpg; tank before 32.1 mpg.

AWD.
A-hole reckless driver. (I cannot say "wreckless".)
Vermont = mountains dirt roads up and down real hills alla time.

As a AWD owner exclusively since 1991, I suggest the Kizashi mileage is superb.
If you bought a FWD version then I don't understand your purchase

ipaqxman · Mon Sep 09, 2013 11:36 pm

BxKizashiS wrote:i think the mpg on the Kizashi sucks, the most ive gotten doin only highway, 39 miles back and forth was 32mpg (and that was in a 2 month period).. but on a regular now i get like 24mpg

24 MPG? With what overall average speed on the display may I ask?

murcod · Tue Sep 10, 2013 12:55 am

WESHOOT2 wrote: If you bought a FWD version then I don't understand your purchase

It's got to have manual transmission or I'm walking to the next dealer/ brand.

If I lived where it snowed, I could understand you. If the Kizashi was a wheel spinning monster, I could understand you. (I've owned an AWD turbo and it was awesome, but IMHO the Kizashi just doesn't need the extra grip on normal sealed roads.)

Regarding the fuel economy posts, I'm interested in what vehicles people are comparing the Kizashi against to complain about the economy? ie. what their previous vehicle was that had better economy when driven in the same area/ conditions?

LPSISRL · Tue Sep 10, 2013 2:38 am

My Kizashi usually gets better mileage than my 2009 SX4 AWD MT. But only by a couple. Funny thing is the worst mileage I ever got on it was 24 and that was when my wife drove it.

Firefly · Tue Sep 10, 2013 3:46 am

For me, around 20mpg in slow stop&go, 30-34 highway at 60-70mph. Averaging 23 overall which includes my hilly town and daily commutes into Manhattan. Not bad for an AWD car with fat tires.

It does seem though, that if you are easy on the CVT, it does return pretty good fuel economy. Steady highway cruising at around 60-65 will give good numbers - upper 30s for me.

Tue Sep 10, 2013 12:20 pm

Firefly wrote:It does seem though, that if you are easy on the CVT, it does return pretty good fuel economy. Steady highway cruising at around 60-65 will give good numbers - upper 30s for me.

I agree. The key is what "easy" actually means. Easy in this car are long drawn out acceleration from a stop. well under 2k rpm through the entire rise to cruising speed. Not very practical w/ tons of city stop and go launches....you'd piss everyone off. It's very hard to drive that "easy" all the time but when you do the returns are good. I no longer drive as "easy" as I had when I first purchased the car (having fun w/ it), and I average anywhere from 26.5-28.5 in my routine daily commute. Now with the cooler weather last 2 weeks, I'm at the higher end of that scale. The car def. has a sweet spot for climate preference. At 35k miles, I'd say the engine is pretty much fully broken in now, so I'm happy w/ the MPG (beats the 15-17 I was getting in a stock 5-spd Rubicon that I drove 'easy').

Knightstruth · Tue Sep 10, 2013 1:56 pm

I got 29.1 last tank with 70% highway. This tank so far I'm getting 27.0 with about 60% highway. Think pretty good for an awd sedan. A coworker's accord gets about the same numbers. I did find in the legacy I had when it was winter the mpg dropped. Will see how the kizashi does.

ipaqxman · Tue Sep 10, 2013 3:11 pm

Percentage highway/city is very subjective and hard to interpret person to person. I used to think I drive at least 30% highway. But now seeing I am driving at around average 18 mph in the local area near me (not even congested traffic just lights and stops) which offset the combined average speed to 20 mph even with highway, apparently I am driving at an average speed even lower than EPA city (21 mph). Much more useful if you can give your average speed. How DOES any city driving average at 21 mph!? With lights and stops every block it seem very difficult to me.