Mazda -- Most Fuel Effieient Automaker

dblgoat · Dec 17, 2015

http://www.autoblog.com/photos/most-fuel-efficient-automakers-in-america/

Unobtanium · Dec 18, 2015

Maybe according to the EPA, but according to the real world, I kindof doubt it.

For example, from Shreveport to Lafayette, I averaged around 23mpg with an average speed per the computer of 80mph. It's rated at 30mpg. Did it deliver, in the real world? No. My Jeep on the same exact stretch averaged around 18. What it's rated to average on the highway. It delivered in the real world. My 370Z averaged around 24.5-25.5. It's rated at 26mpg. That's really not far off, from how it delivered.

Now, many people will say "But the EPA rating system does not include 80mph driving!" and will talk about the various protocols and this and that and the other.

About which...I could absolutely not care less. If the laboratory does not reflect the real world, it is NOT the real world that is going to have to change. For example, in the medical field, we know that people are supposed to weigh a certain amount. So what if we made MRI machines and all of our other equipment only to accommodate people of appropriate weight? How, exactly, would that turn out? No, we build that stuff to take 4-800# people depending on the facility. Because the real world isn't going to conform to what the book/lab/theory states. And neither will actual driving speeds conform to the 51mph or whatever it is the EPA has decided upon, for most people who use an on-ramp to get anywhere.

So yeah, they can have their trophy, but I wouldn't buy them a beer for it.

MikeM. · Dec 18, 2015

Unobtanium said:
And neither will actual driving speeds conform to the 51mph or whatever it is the EPA has decided upon, for most people who use an on-ramp to get anywhere.

The EPA driving cycle was heavily influenced by lobbying by the big 3 domestic automakers who wanted their huge hulking, overweight POS to compare more favorably to the svelte, more aerodynamic offerings from Europe. So, yes, the HWY cycle EPA driving speeds are low. Thank GMC, Ford and Chevy lobbyists. It just so happens that a tall, boxy CUV cross-over with the most ground clearance in it's class benefits from the EPA driving cycle that the big 3 helped to draft. The Mazda 6 sedan on the other hand will blow you away with it's HWY mpg, if you like to compare at 80 mph average speeds. The CX-5 is rather aerodynamic for it's dimensions and overall boxy shape because the engineers paid attention to the little details but a brick can only get so aerodynamic! The Mazda 6 is really good though!

So yeah, they can have their trophy, but I wouldn't buy them a beer for it.

Maybe you shouldn't have anymore beer yourself! (deadhorse

ALafya · Dec 18, 2015

Unobtanium said:
...with an average speed per the computer of 80mph.

Wow, average speed of 80. It means you were probably doing well over 90mph in long stretches... no wonder you'd get poor economy.

madar · Dec 18, 2015

I’m quite impressed with the mileage I’m getting. Right now it’s 28 to 30 mpg with the snow tires on. My daily 25 mile drive to work is combined city /highway (about 50/50). In warmer temps with regular tires I’ll average about 31. Highway trips will get me averaging 35. I used to average higher before the transmission swap ( upper 30s). I don’t know if I’m averaging lower now because of the trans change or maybe it’s just higher mileage wear and tear, but I really have no complaints.
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Rarebit · Dec 18, 2015

One owner's fuel economy is not likely to be representative of the entire fleet of cars from that manufacturer.

Unobtanium · Dec 18, 2015

ALafya said:
Wow, average speed of 80. It means you were probably doing well over 90mph in long stretches... no wonder you'd get poor economy.

Nope. Just near zero traffic and a 75mph speed limit. I set the cruise on 80-82 or so, and would slow down for the rare parallel semi's, and then speed back up to that. Pretty much a smooth sailing drive, that. My point was, none of my other cars (including my brick of a Grand Jeep Cherokee) varied by over 2mpg on the same trip vs. their EPA rating...so I really don't care who lobbied for what. Nissan, Dodge, and Chevrolet have delivered for me. Mazda, has not. Mazda is famous for that, though. See RX8 buy-back...

MikeM. · Dec 18, 2015

madar said:
 I’m quite impressed with the mileage I’m getting. Right now it’s 28 to 30 mpg with the snow tires on.

Agreed, I only have about 25% city and my AWD wears winter tires almost half the year, sees plenty of snow and mountain driving and my overall average since new is 32.4 MPG. That includes every tank, every warm-up, every idle in stop and go traffic and every rocky poorly maintained back-country mountain road traveled mostly in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears. I don't know what manufacturer offers this much space and comparable MPG in an AWD. Mazda deserves the award.

Let's not even get into driving pleasure!

Unobtanium · Dec 18, 2015

MikeM. said:
Agreed, I only have about 25% city and my AWD wears winter tires almost half the year, sees plenty of snow and mountain driving and my overall average since new is 32.4 MPG. That includes every tank, every warm-up, every idle in stop and go traffic and every rocky poorly maintained back-country mountain road traveled mostly in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears. I don't know what manufacturer offers this much space and comparable MPG in an AWD. Mazda deserves the award.

Let's not even get into driving pleasure!

Lexus has a couple, as does BMW and Mercedes. Don't forget Subaru, either.

jhu8 · Dec 18, 2015

Unobtanium said:
Nope. Just near zero traffic and a 75mph speed limit. I set the cruise on 80-82 or so, and would slow down for the rare parallel semi's, and then speed back up to that. Pretty much a smooth sailing drive, that. My point was, none of my other cars (including my brick of a Grand Jeep Cherokee) varied by over 2mpg on the same trip vs. their EPA rating...so I really don't care who lobbied for what. Nissan, Dodge, and Chevrolet have delivered for me. Mazda, has not. Mazda is famous for that, though. See RX8 buy-back...

What were you mpg based on? The car display or hand calculated numbers?

But as for the CX-5, I think the majority, and fuelly.com provides plenty of examples that the CX-5 without a doubt provides one of the best mpg CUVs. Right next to the CR-V. Everyone else is 3-4mpg less on average. To think you're going to get epa estimates doing over 80mph is crazy. Some cars do have better peak efficiencies at higher speeds, but I think 80 is pushing it.

Unobtanium · Dec 19, 2015

jhu8 said:
What were you mpg based on? The car display or hand calculated numbers?
Car display, but honestly, it has typically averaged about 1mpg less than my hand calculations...not near enough off to make up for being nearly 7mpg below sticker.

But as for the CX-5, I think the majority, and fuelly.com provides plenty of examples that the CX-5 without a doubt provides one of the best mpg CUVs. Right next to the CR-V. Everyone else is 3-4mpg less on average. To think you're going to get epa estimates doing over 80mph is crazy. Some cars do have better peak efficiencies at higher speeds, but I think 80 is pushing it.

I guess. I was spoiled by my Hemi powered Jeep. It did, and so I expected other SUV's to, as well. I think literally the worst mileage it ever got was going 65-70mph in pouring rain and a terrible storm. Got something like 16mpg. 3 less than sticker. Towing a U-haul doing 70mph, it got over 13mpg, lol! Only 5 less than sticker. My CX-5 doing 80 gets...6-7 less than sticker. Yeah, it's not up to par, no matter what excuses get made for it.

Doesn't mean it isn't economical and nice, but you're not going to convince me they didn't "game" the tests.

Rarebit · Dec 19, 2015

I have more faith in Fuelly results than a few posts to forums.

http://www.fuelly.com/car/mazda/cx-5?engineconfig_id=53&bodytype_id=6&submodel_id=1083

I'm getting 23.3 average for the past 6 months, but I live in one of the most congested cities in North America. Stop and go driving half of the time. But I also got 30.95 on a trip over a mountain pass with 2 4,000 foot summits, running at an average speed of 67 mph.

The EPA tests don't produce real-world achievable numbers, but take a look to see where your mileage sits on the fuelly site. If you're in the bottom 25%, there's a reason for it and it's probably not your vehicle.

Unobtanium · Dec 19, 2015

Rarebit said:
I have more faith in Fuelly results than a few posts to forums.

http://www.fuelly.com/car/mazda/cx-5?engineconfig_id=53&bodytype_id=6&submodel_id=1083

I'm getting 23.3 average for the past 6 months, but I live in one of the most congested cities in North America. Stop and go driving half of the time. But I also got 30.95 on a trip over a mountain pass with 2 4,000 foot summits, running at an average speed of 67 mph.

The EPA tests don't produce real-world achievable numbers, but take a look to see where your mileage sits on the fuelly site. If you're in the bottom 25%, there's a reason for it and it's probably not your vehicle.

Nah, but I didn't somehow decide to drive differently. EVERY SINGLE VEHICLE I have owned, has met its highway EPA rating how I drive....except my CX5.

MikeM. · Dec 19, 2015

(deadhorse

Unobtanium said:
Nah, but I didn't somehow decide to drive differently. EVERY SINGLE VEHICLE I have owned, has met its highway EPA rating how I drive....except my CX5.

And you are the only person I've ever heard make the claim that every vehicle they owned met the EPA HWY MPG estimates (and especially not at 80 mph avg. speed!). Most people I've heard from say you would have to drive like grandma to get close to EPA estimates and to take them with a huge grain of salt.

(whistle)

ALafya · Dec 19, 2015

Unobtanium said:
Nope. Just near zero traffic and a 75mph speed limit. I set the cruise on 80-82 or so, and would slow down for the rare parallel semi's, and then speed back up to that. Pretty much a smooth sailing drive, that.

So, how did you measure this? Did you reset the values while driving 80-82 and made a reading before stopping? Something else?
I rarely break 60 on my average MPH, despite long stretches of ~75 mph. Obeying the speed limit, I can get 30 MPG easily on long trips with long sections of 60 MPH. If I drive faster (more freeway miles), it drops to ~28, all hand-calculated. I think it is pretty good for a tall CUV with AWD.

Your expectations are just unrealistic if you drive fast.

Unobtanium · Dec 20, 2015

ALafya said:
So, how did you measure this? Did you reset the values while driving 80-82 and made a reading before stopping? Something else?
I rarely break 60 on my average MPH, despite long stretches of ~75 mph. Obeying the speed limit, I can get 30 MPG easily on long trips with long sections of 60 MPH. If I drive faster (more freeway miles), it drops to ~28, all hand-calculated. I think it is pretty good for a tall CUV with AWD.

Your expectations are just unrealistic if you drive fast.

I got up to speed when I got on 49S, re-set everything, and let the computer do the math.

My Jeep had no issues meeting spec.
Apparently I'm not alone, either:
http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f67/5-7l-hemi-mpg-1514908/
http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f67/2006-jgc-overland-5-7l-hemi-gas-mileage-589891/
^one guy in that thread gets 15mpg doing 90mph. That's only 3mpg below rated. I got nearly SEVEN under rated doing 10mph less, and the JGC WK has a TON more drag than a sleek little CX-5.
Other guy gets 18-20 with cruise set on 75...rated at 18 if he's AWD, 19 if he's 2WD...

Don't get me wrong, the Jeep was a POS as a whole, but it DID do what it was advertised to do, in the mileage dept. The way I drove it.

So yeah, I can't help you MikeM. Maybe if you branched out a little you might find that people are doing exactly what I told you I was doing. Why don't you go and look for yourself? Might learn something. Never too old to learn!

Oh, and once I did drive my Jeep at 50-55. I was terrified I was going to run out of gas. It was a new highway (stretch of I49 in N LA), and there were NO stations. I got 23mpg, lol!

ALafya · Dec 20, 2015

Unobtanium said:
meeting spec

There is no such spec for fuel economy while driving 80 or more. Your expectation of fuel economy or any adherence to any published numbers at that speed are unrealistic.
Also, keep in mind MPG is a bad unit because MPG difference can only be compared with same base consumption, so 1 MPG difference from 15 base consumption is not the same as 1 MPG difference with 23 or 60 MPG base consumption.
So, if what you say is true, the already horrendous EPA "economy" of 18 dropping to 15 means an increase of 20% in fuel usage compared with 30 dropping to 23 is 30% increase.

I never tried it, as the fastest I drove in consistent speed is ~75 and I was getting ~27 instant MPG readings, though I don't know how accurate this is. My avg. consumption gage can be +- 2MPG from reality. At the end of the trip, at the fuel pump, my overall hand calculated gas milage for the entire trip (including slower sections) was ~28. So, I am not disappointed.

MikeM. · Dec 20, 2015

ALafya said:
There is no such spec for fuel economy while driving 80 or more. Your expectation of fuel economy or any adherence to any published numbers at that speed are unrealistic.

Oh, absolutely. But you're wasting your time trying to convince him of that. He thinks his one ownership experience with his one CX-5, driving how he drives it, on the roads he drives on is the definitive moment of what the "real world" MPG is.

Also, keep in mind MPG is a bad unit because MPG difference can only be compared with same base consumption, so 1 MPG difference from 15 base consumption is not the same as 1 MPG difference with 23 or 60 MPG base consumption.

Spot on again. I was going to mention that very relevant point but it flies right over some peoples head.

Unobtanium · Dec 20, 2015

ALafya said:
There is no such spec for fuel economy while driving 80 or more. Your expectation of fuel economy or any adherence to any published numbers at that speed are unrealistic.
Also, keep in mind MPG is a bad unit because MPG difference can only be compared with same base consumption, so 1 MPG difference from 15 base consumption is not the same as 1 MPG difference with 23 or 60 MPG base consumption.
So, if what you say is true, the already horrendous EPA "economy" of 18 dropping to 15 means an increase of 20% in fuel usage compared with 30 dropping to 23 is 30% increase.

I never tried it, as the fastest I drove in consistent speed is ~75 and I was getting ~27 instant MPG readings, though I don't know how accurate this is. My avg. consumption gage can be +- 2MPG from reality. At the end of the trip, at the fuel pump, my overall hand calculated gas milage for the entire trip (including slower sections) was ~28. So, I am not disappointed.

All I'm saying is that all my other vehicles are typically -+ 2mpg on road trips from the epa sticker. My cx5 is regularly down 3.5, never ever hits epa, and is sometimes down by well over 5. In short, mazda probably gamed it to the epa test cycle.

Kindof like my trans am. It was rated at 320 horsepower, but made at least 350. Gm gave f body owners "something more" while ford rated their mustang Mach 1 at 305hp...and that's exactly all it made. And then mazda came along and overrated their rx8 and had to offer to buy them all back, lol!

ALafya · Dec 20, 2015

Unobtanium said:
All I'm saying is that all my other vehicles are typically -+ 2mpg on road trips from the epa sticker. My cx5 is regularly down 3.5, never ever hits epa, and is sometimes down by well over 5. In short, mazda probably gamed it to the epa test cycle.

See what people on Fuelly are getting. Looks like your result is not typical and that Mazda is spot on as per EPA combined MPG.

Mazda -- Most Fuel Effieient Automaker

dblgoat

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Unobtanium

MikeM.

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ALafya

madar

Rarebit

Unobtanium

MikeM.

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Unobtanium

jhu8

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Unobtanium

Rarebit

Unobtanium

MikeM.

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ALafya

Unobtanium

ALafya

MikeM.

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Unobtanium

ALafya

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