Fuel consumption

Sounds pretty normal. Is there a question?

Wow, I'm jealous. I do about the same type of driving. I am generally very gentle with the gas pedal. My best has been 22.8mpg. It is usually around

21.5mpg. I have 3000 miles on my 05 OBW 4 cylinder Automatic.

Try a different brand of gas. I got 23.5 mpg with my fillup today and I have a lead foot.

I have to say I find these discussions on fuel consumption a bit meaningless.

Fuel consumption varies so much depending on driving style, type of terrain, speed, temperature and traffic.

I, too, have a 2005 2.5i OBW with automatic and find I get better than EPA rating on the highways and better than EPA overall on a long mixed trip.

But in my home town in winter, where I rarely get above third gear since it's all up and down hills with a 40 km speed limit, I'm getting much worse than EPA - about twice my highway consumption.

Overall, I'm impressed with the performance.

snipped-for-privacy@worldtel.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

And also the type of fuel, if it "reformulated", has MTBE or Ethanol, and if it's winter or summer blend.

Not to mention outside air temp because it has a direct impact on power production (and thus gas pedal usage), as well as air conditioner which on a small 2.0L saps a lot more than on a big V8.

I like to hear all the various descriptions of people's driving styles and the terrains and circumstances and restrictions they are under. I put it all in perspective. Having heard all the testimonies here, I realize I am getting normal efficiency from my car, and that's a bit of a comfort, and it's also a bit annoying that I can't expect much better. But either way, I'm glad to have the perspective.

Just my experience with my '01 OBW, 2.5l automatic.

I find it interesting how different engine styles or engine tuning styles make a huge difference to the relative peformance and fuel consumption of different cars.

If I take it reasonably easy in my 2.5l Legacy wagon (1995 250T auto) then I use between about 8.7 and 9 l/100 km on a long trip. This is worse than my previous 2.0l Toyota Corona liftback which used about 8 l/100 km, and I believe that is pretty typical for many 1.8 - 2.0 - 2.5 cars. If I push a bit harder with lots of overtaking to maintain a high average speed then I get up around 10 l/100 km.

Driving in the city, with mostly 50 km/h in the suburbs or downtown and occasional short stretches on the motorway I also get right around 10 l/100km. Many of the cars that use less than the Subaru on the open road use considerably more than this in the city, while being much more sluggish than the Subaru. Mitsubishi's seem to be an extreme example of this.

I don't often drive larger cars, but recently I was driving a Ford Territory eight hours a day on a contract job measuring mobile phone data download speeds (CDMA EVDO). The Territory is a 4.0l AWD crossover station wagon a litle bigger than an Outback:

It was really rather pleasant to drive, with similar performance to a

2.5l Subaru and good handling and comfort, but the fuel consumption was something else!

Overall we averaged 22 l/100km in city driving!

This is perhaps a little unfair to it, as most of that was driving in the city at 30 - 40 km/h. At one point we did 100 km on a flat and straight road with no traffic at a constant 109 km/h on the cruise control and it averaged 13 l/100km, only about 45% more than the Subaru would use in the same situation.

According to the computer's instantaneous readout, at 100 km/h it used about 12 l/100km and at 80 km/h it used about 9 l/100km. I don't know what the Subaru does at those speeds as it doesn't have a computer and I've never had the opportunity or inclination to drive a significant distance at a steady 80 km/h!