Bay Area MPG

[addabox]

I know there have been plenty of threads about mileage, but a lot of the people responding appear to spend most of their time on dead level, lightly populated freeways (or at least it seems that way, based on the 30+ aggregate MPG they're reporting compared to what I can achieve even when being very conservative with the go pedal).

So I know there are some Bay Area folk around here. If you live here you know the drill: heavily congested urban driving stoplight to stoplight, heavily congested freeways with a lot of ups and downs for ramps, freeways that go over mountains, etc. In other words, kind of the worst case scenario for gas mileage. About the only way to get keep the MPG up is to drive from SF to LA, overnight.

So what are my fellow Bay Areans seeing in real world MPG (or I guess any seriously urban area-- I imaging LA etc not so different)? I've been unable to average much better than 24, and that's if I'm careful. Seems like even a few enthusiastic launches can materially effect the average on a tank, which is a little scary-- did Mazda engineer a motor that can get up in the 30s if you hold the RPM at around 2k, but achieves lively acceleration by dumping a half gallon of fuel at one go? Seriously, I knocked a full mile per gallon off my tank average by punching it about 4 times.

At any rate, I had a nice long drive to Redwood City and back and it looks like the relatively unobstructed freeway drive is going to get me up over 25 for the first time. I can't really say I'm bummed, because the engine only has 2500 miles on it and I expect the mileage to still improve a bit, and I'm getting close to the advertised combo in what amounts to mostly city style driving (even when on the "freeway", which in the Bay Area often means "parking lot.").

Anyone else?

 

[runtohell121]

I manage around 27 to 28 mpg, depending on the traffic condition on my 2014 2.5L AWD... Though most of the driving is highway from South Bay (Fremont, Milpitas, San Jose) back to Monterey Bay/Gilroy... but I do spend decent amount of time in local driving within the Bay...

If it was long distance/road trips to other parts of California, I think I can manage 27 to 30 mpg depending on what kind of hills there are.

 

[addabox]

That sounds about right. Most of my freeway driving is the Bay Bridge between Oakland and SF, and there are typically a lot of slow downs or just generally slow traffic. Not that that isn't true of every freeway in every direction as far as the eye can see. Sigh. I keep thinking I'll just light out for the territories one day, like start driving North and not stop till I hit Seattle, just to have a chance to do some uninterrupted open road and give my car a chance to stretch out a bit.

 

[ALafya]

My overall average (beyond the first 2K miles) is 27.7 MPG (2.5 AWD, manually calculated).
When I travel out of town it goes up to 30~29 MPG. However, if I do city-only driving with no highway in the south bay it easily gets to 24. My commute is about 10 miles mostly on 101, with daily traffic. This gets me 27~26 MPG roughly, depending on how bad/good traffic is.

Short trips will kill your MPG and so will stop light to stop light. However, if traffic is flowing, even if slow, you can take advantage of the great economy you can get when coasting at about the same speed.

The average MPG meter for me is anywhere between dead accurate to +-1.5MPG, but usually withing +0.5 MPG of reality.

 

[deepfriedsushi]

http://www.fuelly.com/car/mazda/cx-5/2014/deepfriedsushi/189459

Over the life time of my car (13k now) I drove 75% city and I averaged 26.9mpg. You can use this to calculate your city vs hwy splits.

My commute M-F is only 2miles one way and all local here in N.SJ. The engine cold light turns off when I'm half way to work, so it barely has any time to warm up. On weekends, I usually take the car up to SF which will usually help raise the mpg's a bit due to the freeway stint. Edit: I will add though, I rarely sit in traffic idling, but do a lot of stop/go's from light to light. So that might be a factor in why I can get relatively good fuel economy while driving so much "city".

I've been pretty impressed by the fuel economy I get with this car. The last road trip I did was to north Sacramento for white water rafting and that trip returned 29.65mpg avg on majority freeway and a bit of going through some hilly terrain. My trip to Morro Bay (hwy1 down, 101 up) averaged 30.2mpg. I've seen the instant mpg display hold steady at 32mpg while going 70mph on a flat section of freeway, so there's no doubt that I'm getting EPA estimates.

 

[NinjaNoises]

I live in the Bay Area and probably see similar traffic conditions as you do. Mine is manual transmission sport model and gets driven very hard. Average MPG for me is 25.4 MPG tracked using an iPhone app.

I don't think your numbers are abnormal.

 

[addabox]

Managed to get in a few relatively unimpeded 30-40 mile freeway runs on this tank, and got 28 mpg. I reckon that's about 50/50 city/highway, so no complaints. I could easily see getting in the low 30s if my highway miles increased to even 60/40.

 

[CX-SV]

In about 2 1/2 years of ownership, 30K miles, driving mostly in south bay, mpg was 26.3 for me. Freeway trips at 70-80 mph averaged 30 mpg.

That's with a 2.0L awd version.