Incredible MPGs

I have owned the LX for just over a year, average is 52 MPG. Best tank was 57.3MPG, worst was 42.3MPG(cold winter). My mileage seems to be as good, or a tad better in highway driving than town driving. I don't have much city, bumper to bumper/rush hour driving to compare. I'm very pleased to be getting over the EPA estimates, I am not an eco/hyper mileage driver by any stretch, but try to be a sensible one. I think driving too slowly actually is less economical. Because of the gearing, it's best to get up to speed rather than stay in a lower gear longer, to just over the speed wanted, then let the car "plane" out, which lets it go to EV mode easier. I am usually initially accelerating up to speed above the double green area.
I rarely use CC, I find it accelerates less evenly, trying to keep the set speed.
Using the A/C seems to have little or no difference in gas mileage. I keep my tires inflated a couple PSI above the rec. pressure.

Was the PHEV even available for purchase last year? Anyway, assuming that dinesh75's EX is an HEV, I'm really curious about the 80+ mpg home commutes. How much highway vs city streets? Downhill? Traffic? Those are truly impressive figures for an HEV.

My 20-mile morning commutes are usually around 55-60mpg (according to the dash), and 50-55mpg going home (70% freeway, 30% city streets, with some traffic everyday). The highest I got was 87mpg on an 11-mile trip that was mostly downhill. But my dash is usually about 2-3mpg optimistic. According to the app I use (which calculates the mpg after each gas fill-up), after 2,400 miles, my lifetime average is at 55mpg, so I'm pretty happy that my EX HEV is above the 49mpg EPA rating. Also, I live in a pretty warm climate, so I guess that helps. But man, I am nowhere near 80+ mpg on my commutes!

Hi Jaysan, yes, they are incredibly mileages, that's why I specifically posted because I am so pleased.


So morning is 60+ and evening is 80+, so for my daily roundtrip milerage (40-45 miles), is around 70-75mpg, which I think is fantastic


In the morning, I would say I am more on the highway than the streets (for people familiar with the DC area, I take the I 495 W from MD to VA).



In the evening, I usually take I 66 E into DC, and then head into MD on the local roads, so slightly higher proportion of local roads.


I tend to coast as much as possible, and the traffic in the area actually makes it easy to coast without annoying people, haha. Even on the highways, sometimes it's stop and go, or some minor slowdown somewhere. That allows me to coast. I won't say anything is uphill or downhill on my commute, both morning and evening. So essentially it's just because I am able to coast, due to the traffic conditions here.


And yes, warmth does help. I get better mileage on warmers days.

Sorry about the assumption (partly from your display which all PHEVs have but not all HEVs), but your mpg is clearly an outlier other than extreme hypermiling, which is probably not possible on 495 without significant danger.

One possible reason is using short trip figures. Easy to use sport mode to fill battery at night and then get 99mpg on a short trip in the morning. It is also possible you are getting a drafting boost from closely packed traffic on 495 generating favorable wind direction. What is your average mpg when you fill up over the entire tank? What is your total mpg over the life of the car?

I'll be happy to share mine, which I had thought was excellent (exceeded my expectations). I top off my tank every time so no gas station pump differences.

Lifetime mpg over 6,726 miles is 50.87 (and rising rapidly)
First tank at 496 miles in 20 degree weather at 75 mph was 41.68 mpg.
Last tank of 701 miles in warm weather on long trip never exceeding 65 was 58.70.

I'm hoping that my annual or lifetime average exceeds 52 mpg, but it will depend on how fast I cross the country on what used to be frequent trips. Without those, I may be able to get to 54 mpg annually (four season driving). That seems pretty incredible to me considering the aero profile of this car. I'm exceeding Gen 3 Prius models.

no, to both. It seems defeating to the overall mpg to charge the battery by driving hard, and then trying to maximize the mileage for the next short trip. Why would anyone do that?
and no, I never ever tailgate, or drafting, like you said. I maintain at least 8-10 car distances between me and the car in front of me. Safety is more important to me than mileage!


ok let me try to get those numbers from my Niro. Currently, my setup is that it will show (while driving, it shows the overall fuel economy since the last fill up), and then once the engine is switched off, it will show the mileage from that run. My average since last fillup is 67.5 mpg.


I have been getting such numbers, so I am guessing my lifetime is maybe around 60 mpg? but will get the exact numbers from the car. It's always possible I have forgotten the bad numbers, and only remember the good ones, thus skewing my memory.

dinesh75 said:

Actually, how does one get the lifetime mileage? What is the menu direction to get to that number?

Click to expand...

See the attached picture showing the in-car "fuel economy reset" setting. I assume that if this setting has been at "OFF" since the time you first bought your car, then the displayed mpg would be your (car-calculated) lifetime fuel economy so far. But when I bought my car, it was set to "after refueling" (which I prefer), so the mpg that is displayed is always per tank. (Of course, you can always manually reset it anytime by long-pressing the OK button.) But I don't really trust the accuracy of what's shown in the dash. For example, right before my last fill up, the car's computer showed 60.3mpg for that tank. But after filling up, the phone app that I use showed a true calculated fuel efficiency of 55.2mpg for that same tank of gas.

To calculate your "true" mpg, I guess you have to keep logs of your odometer readings and how many gallons you pumped into your tank during your gas station visits. A lot of apps like Fuelly (or Fuelio which I use) automatically calculate this mpg for you based on that info which you input. And if you've kept such logs since you around the time you first bought your Niro (like me), then I think you can get a pretty accurate calculation of your true lifetime mpg.