Recently I was alerted to an interesting stunt pulled by Toyota itself in order to flaunt the terrific fuel economy of the new iQ: ecodriving the car around England. The goal is to beat the mileage ratings on the car while ecodriving and hopefully achieving over 500 miles on a single tank. They want to go as far as possible, though they don’t think they’ll be able to make it to the magical 600 mile mark.
With the journey partially done and the iQ filled up after 504 miles, the team was able to turn in a respectable 72mpg (which may be imperial gallons, meaning about 60 mpg US, but this isn’t made clear). Either way, that’s pretty good mileage turned out of the car, but I think we’ll all have to reserve judgment until some more real world numbers pour in.
Interesting to note, however, is that the instantaneous and average mpg figures on the iQ’s display seem to stop at an upper bound of 60 mpg. This is particularly strange considering that the British government has the car pegged at 65.7 mpg, meaning the iQ can’t even display its average mileage! Toyota, what’s up there?
I’ve been in contact with Toyota on this one and I will ask to see if I can get some more details on how they drove the car, whether they learned any tricks, and if there is a fuel economy “sweet spot” for the car.
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Thanks for writing about the attempt – I’m one of the two drivers.
You can read about it in full on the Toyota iQ blog, but in short:
We set off on a route that aimed to take us through the centre of 18 cities in England and Wales. The car’s official figures are 65.7mpg (imperial) with a 7 gallon (32 litre) tank, so its theoretical range is 462 miles.
Over two days’ driving, we made it to our 18th city – Oxford – took a photograph, and then ran out of petrol two miles further on. We’d covered 504.2 miles on a full tank, despite having driven through bad weather and the traffic of 18 city-centres, so we managed nearly 72mpg (imperial).
That was it, though, we filled up and headed home after that 🙂
You’re quite right about the economy gauge. We’ve asked our technical contacts within Toyota why it doesn’t go above 60mpg, and we hope to have an answer soon – please let us know if you hear back before us!
I read about this on here http://www.toyotaiqcentral.com/news/toyota-iq-blog-news.htm. Basically you know who the green manufacurers are and who bulls**ts about their real life fuel economy figures depending on who enters.
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