Gas Mileage
I was thinking about taking a poll regarding actual gas mileage. Mine is terrible on short city trips and I overheard a lady talking about how bad her car was. Yes I know cold weather, city driving, short trips, nothing could be worse.
Mine: 2002 Jetta 1.8T GLS Auto City 19 mpg, highest hwy was 30 mpg – once, hwy avg is about 27. Sticker claimed 22 /29.
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297 Said,
March 7, 2006 @ 2:10 am
Gas Mileage – 19/27 is a realistic representation of a sticker 22/29. If you want to improve your mileage, it has a lot to do with how you drive. This isn’t as important on an automatic, but even then if you temper your acceleration, be frugal with braking, and keep highway speeds below speed limit you’ll even be able to hit higher mileage numbers.
But who wants to do that?
Coincidentally, I’ve been running a series of experiments on mileage the past few weeks, ever since I started driving the daily commute again instead of taking the bus. I currently drive about 35 miles total in a work day, all city driving (the bit on the 405 I consider city driving since it’s bumper to bumper rush hour on that freeway and I never get above 20mph except on a good day where I get to 35). If I drove aggressively, launching the car spiritedly (but not like a drag racer) and shifted at 3500-4000 RPM, the ride was ridiculously fun but the mileage suffered greatly. For the first time ever my car was sub-20mpg, somewhere around 18mpg. Driving normally in the city gets me 21/22mpg, that’s just being a normal, casual driver. Right now, I’m trying a boring experiment of accelerating like grandma and shifting at 1800-2000 RPM. From the looks of the gas meter, which I’ve come to know what that needle actually means versus what it thinks it’s telling me, I’m looking at around 26mpg. The best I ever did was 33mpg from San Francisco to Los Angeles at a steady clip of 70mph.
Back when the car was used only on weekends for fun driving, I regularly saw 23 mpg, mostly because I was having fun driving.
Post edited 03/07/06 2:10 PM by paultakeda
V-dubber Said,
March 7, 2006 @ 7:11 am
Gas Mileage – 2002 GTI VR6 6-speed manual
No doubt, the mileage on the VR6 is entirely dependent on the speed and nature of the drive. I have a trip odometer that tracks the average trip mpg, which keeps me aware of my fuel economy.
I average about 22-25 mpg on my daily commute, a mixture of city traffic, and highway cruising (about 12 miles each way). In the winter, due to the cold starts my mileage tends to be a little lower.
On highway trips I’m usually somewhere between 25-28 depending on the speed of traffic. I have a roof rack that probably costs me between 1-2 mpg on the highway.
I find that if I’m in a rural area cruising around 55 I can get over 30 mpg. Sadly, I rarely get to just cruise through the country.
The worst mileage I’ve gotten highway was probably on a stretch through South/North Carolina. With two surfboards on the roof I can usually get around 25 on the highway. Going 80 mph, I think I was below 20 mpg. Wind resistance played a huge factor.
I really wonder why the gear ratio in the 6-speed VR6 is so short. With so much torque, I wonder how much a taller 6th gear would help with fuel economy. I know wind resistance is a major factor in mileage, but how about those extra RPMs? I rode in a friend’s Acura TL with the 6-speed manual that gets respectable highway mileage. It really seems like 6th gear is so much taller than on my GTI (also way more quiet…and fast…really fast)
Post edited 03/07/06 7:12 PM by V-dubber