Gas Mileage Experiment

[rh71]

As I mentioned before, I travel the same couple miles everyday and it bores me so much that I look at my mpg needle on the dash... if you're accelerating to something like 45mph on a local road and want to stay there, typically you'd keep your foot on the gas just enough. What you actually can do is let off a tad and the needle will show that your mpg increases quite a bit... if you hit the gas again just a bit to maintain, it will still show better mpg. I'd say at least by 10mpg on the meter. I don't know if it messes with the gearing but you're basically going from a pull to a coast. Seems like common sense but we drive in the 40mph range so often on local roads that you just don't think about stuff like this. I just find it interesting how much you could possibly save if you wanted. Personally, I don't drive frequently enough to care... I spend about $120/mo. on gas, 2 fill-ups.

[swisstype]

I ended up having to drive some highway miles on this and had to cut it short. I did, however, get just under 200 miles of strictly city driving. Again, I have a 2008 4.8, so these are not 6 cylinder results. I averaged 23.2 mph with an average of of 17.8 mpg. I ended up driving in the downtown vicinity and noticed that the consistent stop and go was horrible on the mileage, and it was hard to manage the X5 trying to feather the gas and then slow down/ coast to the stoplights. It pissed off the other drivers too, so I had to moderate as best as I could. I am currently on another tank of gas and am seeing my city MPG be around 14-ish, but again, I can drive around South Bend for a while and not have so much stop and go. I think I will be seeing about a 4 MPG difference, but I will follow up. I will say that the thing i s way much more enjoyable to driv ewith your foot than the CC stalk.