If you’re expecting to get 35 miles per gallon on your new car and end up only getting 20, you’ll definitely feel it in your wallet. At the current national average of about $4 per gallon of regular unleaded gas, it would cost those in the lower-performing scenario an extra $1,300 after driving it 15,000 miles.
With gas prices so high and many people keen on more environmentally friendly motoring choices, you’ll want to understand what you’re buying and how to get the best fuel economy from your car.
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The stickers on new-car windows, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s miles-per-gallon estimates, can frustrate those who fail to get the mileage the stickers appear to promise.
Though the stickers come with a disclaimer that says, “Your actual mileage will vary,” many still wonder why the performance of their cars differs so much from the estimates.
Car companies often use the mileage estimates generated by the EPA for their advertising efforts, a habit that Carroll Lachnit, features editor of Edmunds.com, says should be tempered. “Car companies may be setting themselves up for criticism by using those numbers so prominently in their advertising,” Lachnit said. “Consumers seize on numbers — particularly with gas as expensive as it is.”
The numbers can lead car buyers down a frustrating path, said George Cook, executive professor at the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester.
“As a new vehicle purchase criteria, miles per gallon can be a big deal to a consumer,” he said. “We believe what we see until we find out differently.”
The issue of underperforming cars received heightened attention in February, when a California woman won a small-claims judgment against Honda Motor Co. The woman alleged that her 2006 Civic delivered a high of around 40 mpg instead of the EPA-estimated 50 mpg. The case has been appealed.
The disparate results highlight the idea that every driver’s experience is going to vary, said Jim Trainor, spokesman for Hyundai Motor America.
“If you’re (driving) around town and going a mile here, a mile there … you’re not going to get anything close to the EPA’s test ratings.” Understanding that, he said, “is a real public education issue.”
The split between EPA mileage estimates and actual performance has spawned a variety of options for consumers to get a better feel for reality — where drivers log in with their actual performance. Among the sites that collect such data are: Fuelly.com, TrueDelta.com, CleanMPG.com and even the EPA’s FuelEconomy.gov.
Experts say everyone may have a different experience. Driving style alone could cause a 35 percent drop in fuel efficiency, Lachnit said. Someone who weaves in and out of traffic and is heavy on the accelerator will get much lower gas mileage than someone slow and steady.
“There are huge variances,” said Eric Mallia, business manager for FleetCarma in Waterloo, Ontario. “We’ve done some analysis and seen up to 60 percent variance from window sticker (estimates). We find that’s something most people don’t understand.”