Tips for getting the best MPG

[ReManG]

I have been returning about +2 mpg better after changing the oil for the new Mazda MQ 0W-20 oil. I was returning about 30mpg tank average over three tanks and this has gone up to about 32mpg over the first three tanks with the new oil. I am running about 36 psi in the stock 17" rims/tires, and will try to see how this does at around 41 psi when I fill my tires this week. I have also found that the AT does pretty well with holding speeds between 40 and 55 mph at 40+ mpg if you are careful with your right foot. Here is a link to the other thread about the oil:

http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/show...he-new-Mazda-0w20-GF-5-with-moly-Improved-MPG

 

[popeyecahn]

I noticed several of the posters (in this old thread...) are from SD which is my turf as well. Little has been mentioned about terrain and that plays a pretty good part of our driving experience here and it impacts mpgs as much as anything else. Sure the tops of the mesas are flat but getting up to them is the real mpg killer.

Something else to consider at this point (not so much when this thread began) are winter gas blends, they can have some minor effect as well. Then of course is winter itself (not a big problem here in SD), it can affect mileage as well and when you add up all these hits...

All that said my display shows 31.5 currently on my first tank. I'll be curious to see how the on board computer fares against a more empiracal test at the pump in the coming month or so.

 

[brillo]

At 6500mi we have no issues meeting or exceeding 26/32 on our FWD auto CX5. I average 40 in the city and 70 on the hwy. I think the CX5 is under rated on mileage. Keep your tire pressures up and be more gingerly with the throttle.The RX8 issues were over power not economy.

 

[ReManG]

Brillo, did you mean mph or mpg on your city and highway numbers? I will be real jealous if it's mpgs.....

 

[brillo]

Mph with the 40 and 70 reference. I wish that was my mpg

 

[sdpadsfan]

I noticed several of the posters (in this old thread...) are from SD which is my turf as well. Little has been mentioned about terrain and that plays a pretty good part of our driving experience here and it impacts mpgs as much as anything else. Sure the tops of the mesas are flat but getting up to them is the real mpg killer.

Something else to consider at this point (not so much when this thread began) are winter gas blends, they can have some minor effect as well. Then of course is winter itself (not a big problem here in SD), it can affect mileage as well and when you add up all these hits...

All that said my display shows 31.5 currently on my first tank. I'll be curious to see how the on board computer fares against a more empirical test at the pump in the coming month or so.

I had wondered about the difference between winter blend and summer blend. When I originally posted this, we were on summer blend. Since then, my mileage has gone up considerably. I will be curious to see if there in an impact in a few months when we go back to summer blend. The idea about terrain playing a role is definitely relevant here in San Diego as it seems like I am always climbing.

 

[CatButler]

Really short trips kill my gas mileage. When I was off work at Christmas, I did a lot of short distance (<2 miles) trips to the store or drop kids off. I had a 26 MPG tank then. Going to work is a about 2-3 miles of suburban driving followed by 50-55 mph with a few stop lights for about 10 miles. I usually hit about 29 mpg per tank. I haven't gone on a pure HW trip yet.

 

[Jcanracer]

I think highway speed is a big one for the CX-5. Watching the instantaneous on flat ground at 78-80mph i'll see 27-28mpg. Dropping it down to 75 29-30 and 70 is 31-32. Then on back roads where 55mph is the speed limit and cruising on flat ground at 60 its not uncommon to see high 30s or even 40mpg. Speed Speed Speed. The question for yourself is, save a few bucks or get to your destination 5 min faster.

I was going to add this observation, but Kampfire posted it already.
My drive to work is 70% Highway, but on our toll road 75+mph is the norm. Worse, I find the CX5 very comfortably does 80mph at just over 3000rpm on our flat Florida roads, but wind resistance is what it is and mileage drops noticeably.
Although the CX5 is fairly aerodynamic, I think the effects of drag increase significantly above 60mph (don't quote me on that, I think I read it in Modified magazine). So not only have I noticed a lower avg mpg because of my driving habits, but I also see on the realtime meter how bad it can be when I have my roof rack up, I saw 20mpg at one point today.

So I guess my real-world fuel saving tips are:
Keep your highway speed under 70mph
If you do a lot of highway driving, remove the roof rack if yours is removable, or if not just remove the crossbars.
Keep your tires properly inflated.

I'm not even going to touch city driving... too many factors.

 

[ReManG]

I have been playing with the tire pressure on the stock tires and it seems to me that around 42psi is worth a try. Ride is not too bad and it definitely seems to coast better. I have also found an ethanol free fuel supplier, together this has added ~1mpg on average for the last two tanks YMMV!

 

[sxa]

This thread has been very informative. I don't really track the mileage in my Hyundai Accent, I do know that I have seen it get as much as 33mpg on the highway which matches the EPA's estimate but city driving is really around 22mpg with the way I drive (EPA estimate is 25 on this car). There are certainly factors, the age of the car being one of them. Though I recently did get the plugs and wires replaced and sadly didn't see a real increase for city driving.

Other factors though include the fact that I don't have cruise control so my speed probably varies more than it should. I do have a bit of a lead foot, too. For those in Austin, you know that Austin drivers are very aggressive and if you don't watch out they will run you off the road.

I am looking forward to having a vehicle though with an active calculation of fuel economy and cruise control in hopes of getting better city economy.

 

[Mazda Cx-5]

My mileage pretty much sucks. I think it is due to a winter fuel blend being used right now. In my daily commute of 50 miles I used to get almost 33 mpg every day. Since winter hit I am lucky to get 26 even when using a 92 octane!! Which in all honesty sucks!! I have put 18k miles on my touring model and still love the car but can not wait for the summer blends to come back so I can make sure I am getting ok gas mileage. Also has anybody else noticed that the dash may say you are getting 28 but your really getting 26. I have always gotten two mpg less that the dash says

 

[HandA]

I think highway speed is a big one for the CX-5.

I've noticed the same thing. On my commute a couple of times I've ended up in pretty heavy traffic that was still moving steadily at around 55-60 and my mpg jumped noticeably. If I move with the flow the rest of the time in the 65-70 range it drops. On vacation on curvy parts of Hwy 1 doing around 40 my range just kept increasing the more I drove

Also the difference between 65 mph and 75 mph is about 3 minutes literally with a 25 mile highway commute.

And the worst part with that is there are so many other variables that even going faster doesn't always get you there 3 minutes early. It is funny how many times when the freeway I'm on gets into sections with traffic lights I end up right behind that car that flew by me way earlier. Driving faster and just catching up with a clump of traffic or a red light doesn't get you there any sooner.

On those times when I've been stuck in the middle of the slower moving traffic mentioned above I still got home at about the same time as normal. Smoother is better, but it is hard to convince all the other drivers of that. I saw one time where when cars start switching lanes on the freeway to try to find the 'faster route' it reduces the capacity of the freeway by 10%

There's a technique called Pulse & Glide that is generally considered to be more efficient than cruise control, but you have to balance ease of driving and compliance to the traffic flow with increasing your MPG.

I've heard that before but never researched it so it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I know in a hybrid on the glide part of it they can recharge the batteries which helps but the accelerating in a regular car just to slow again sounds counter productive.

I wish they'd make a slightly smart cruise control that would allow the car to slow just a couple mph when the road inclined and allow it to accelerate a couple mph when it declined. That is more of the natural flow of driving and would save even more gas. Rather than giving it more gas to keep up the speed when climbing a hill only to turn that gas into heat on the brake rotors when going down the other side.

I like how the real time mpg lets me know what impact everything I do has on the mpg. I have already started changing some of my habits.

I like watching the range left as it doesn't take much time full throttle to drop it considerably and a lot of coasting to stops and avoiding hard acceleration to get it to increase.

There are a lot of factors that can lead to really poor mpg, even if you aren't a lead foot. Use the instant mpg and the range and even try things like resetting the average mpg every couple of minutes to find out at what times it is impacted. By resetting the average mpg more often it has a smaller sample section so you can see it jump or drop depending on your speed or if you step on the gas to pass a car you can really see the result.

I've tried a few tanks of higher octane and found no increase in mpg at all for me.

I haven't noticed much difference with the winter blend gas but I think that is probably because the rest of the year I am either using the AC or driving with the windows down, which lowers mpg too.

Trevor
Mazda CX-5 Discount Accessories

 

[Buger]

I just got done with another road trip and put on about 1000 miles in the last few days. As a test, i used pure no-ethanol gas for the first time and it definitely made a big difference as I got about 4-5 mpg higher than I expected to. I found a no-ethanol place on www.pure-gas.org and it was a strange experience getting gas from a gas supplier instead of a normal gas station. I had to talk to some guy in a warehouse who went outside and pumped from a 1000 gallon tank (the no ethanol gas this place had was 90 octane). The extra price for the pure gas was mostly offset by the extra MPG that I seem to have gotten so perhaps I will try the real stuff again sometime if I can find someplace else where I can pump it myself.

About 20% of the tank was mostly city/suburban before our road trip so I was expecting about 32 mpg but we ended up getting 37.6 mpg when I filled up! Our next tank was back to the normal 10% ethanol 87 octane and I was expecting about 35mpg for the mostly freeway trip but got just over 33mpg. Our top speeds were a little faster than the previous tank but we stayed under 80.

Our next tank was almost 100% freeway but we were less patient and drove faster again (mainly my wife) going above 80 at times while also going up in elevation over 800 feet. I was hoping for about 34 mpg but we only got 31.

So keeping your highway speeds moderate is a very easy way to get your mpgs higher. I always do this in my everyday driving but driving 10-20% faster can make a big difference on an 8 hour road trip. As was mentioned earlier, the drag increases more and more the faster you go. Going 70 or less seems to be good enough to keep the 2.0 engine in atkinson mode a good amount of time to get good mileage. The MPGs definitely get a lot lower going at 80.

I have the 6MT and typically go into neutral when coasting downhill as only a small amount of gas is used at neutral and there isn't much deceleration. I use the torque app to graph my instant MPG from the CX-5 CPU to know exactly what is happening. The instant MPG only seems to go up to 255 but maybe this is a default in the gauge. I've changed the min/max in other gauges but haven't thought about looking at the MPG gauge settings until just now. I use kind of a pulse and glide at times although the pulse and glide in a hybrid would cut all gas to the engine while we still use a small amount when in neutral.

Keeping the engine in gear when cruising does not always seem to cut gas to the engine and adds some extra deceleration due to pumping and drivetrain losses. I found that if I'm cruising in neutral then just shift into gear to decelerate, the CPU will not cut fuel to the engine unless I "blip" the accelerator for an instant. When I'm in gear and have accelerated already, taking the foot off the gas does seem to cut gas to the engine.