Avg Gas Mileage / Speed for SE Sport V6 on 400 Mile Trip

[theprodigy79]

I drove down to Wilmington, NC from Northern VA to spend some time with the 'rents for the holiday and decided to start completely fresh for the trip back (full tank of gas, reset all gauges) just to see what I wound up averaging. The trip was around 98% highway (40 East to 95 North)... I wasn't, by any means, trying for good mileage (my average speed, as shown by pic below was 75.4 MPH). With that average speed, I managed a pleasing 30.9 MPG... Not too shabby for the SE Sport V6 with rims, a ton of audio equip, fully loaded with all my clothes and stuff from Christmas (including a 60lb home theatre subwoofer) and me (235lb dude)


Average Speed:


Average Fuel Economy:


Since the pic above is kinda hard to see, here's one for verification (although still kinda hard to see):


Sorry for the crappy quality pics... I was tryin to manage SAFE highway driving using diff settings on my cellphone cam to get the best possible shots... Kinda hard to do...

All the pics above are AVERAGES taken at the VERY END of the trip.

-James

[dchev]

I got the same average MPG on my trip from Chicago, IL to Charlotte, NC.
But when you calculate the real MPG, you will end up with average 29 MPG. It is still pretty good for V6 engine.

[stockae92]

did you do a calculation off the odometer as well?

the mpg readout tends to read 2-3 mpg high, i wonder if that's true for mixed driving or also true for highway driving only

[cklinh]

In my very unscientific tests... I find that the computer guess gets closer to the hand calculated value if you don't reset the computer every fillup (i.e., just let it keep averaging).

(I've only done this for a few tanks, so who knows if this is really the case)

[cklinh]

Whoa... double post... sorry...

Let me just add that I've gotten as high as 29.5 mpg on my trip down I5 (to SoCal)... that was with a conservative 82 mph average.

[Somedude]

Yep, Toyota sure makes fuel efficient cars.

[slingshot]

Yes, even on highway driving only the MPG reading is a couple mpg too optimistic so that 30.9 rating is probably really 29. Still not bad at all for 75mph driving.

[MCOjerry]

I do quite a bit of mixed driving. Stop and go traffic on highway and city driving. I get around 24 to 26 almost every time. I think that's AWESOME for a V6.

[stockae92]

with mixed driving, i got like 24-25mpg on the read out

and about 23 mpg by calculation

and i wasn't even stepping on it

i have yet taken the solara on a road trip, so i would be interested to see how the mpg would be on a road trip

[Somedude]

I usually get 29 mpg on my Solara, mostly city driving. The best gas milage I got was 37 mpg.

I drive the 2.4 liter Solara with the Automatic transmission.

[stockae92]

great milage for 2.4L

unless you are trying to get grom 0 to 60 faster lol

[Lone Solara]

I just returned from a trip to Miami (from Houston - 2500 miles in 3.5 days), and I did the same thing. The average on the car's computer fluctuated between 31.0 and 28.5, but the true usage was between 29.0 and 25.5 (calculating miles/gallons of gas at pump). I noticed that the car is very sensitive to gas quality. I only use 93 octane, but gas can lose octane if it's too old, the gas station is running out of it, or it was mixed with lower octane gas, etc. I had a couple such instances, and the difference in MPG was evident.

BTW, there were 3 adults in the car, and the car was loaded with suitcases, gifts, etc. On a side note, I was surprised by how many things you can stuff in the convertible's trunk.