to Larrybuck- unfortunately this is to be a family vehicle, so I want the most up to date safety features. The wife understands that this will be the last car purchase for a very long time, so she also wants some finer options. I however, could drive that on my half hour commute and be content.
I came across this article about the diesel model in Japan.
Mazda Skyactiv-D 2.2 Clean Diesel Heads to U.S. in Early 2013 They quote 44 MPG on the JC08 test. So I googled deeper to find this article for conversion over to CAFE. (read EPA)
Test cycles
Basically multiply the JC08 fuel economy by 1.3 to get what the EPA figures will state. 44 turns into 57! But they also have a conversion from NEDC (Europe) to US by multiplying by 1.15. So using the figure of 61.4 MPG combined in Europe from my previous post, I get 70.61.
Crap, I'm a dummy! Just realized that all the multipliers are vehicle specific! Duh! But see how low the Toyota Yaris' were? So I'm going to redo the numbers using the low/high ranges in each column; JC08-51.48 to 61.16, Europe 63.856 to 72.452. Someone smarter than me yell at me, if this assumption is stupid or not!