Our ethanol mandate hurts some, I doubt anybody is running ethanol free gas except the EPA which says they adjust the sticker down 1.5% because of that. From the EPA webpage, "EPA adjusts the fuel economy label estimates downward by about 10 percent to account for a variety of factors that are not currently accounted for during laboratory fuel economy testing, such as tire under-inflation, wind, hills, and road conditions. It also includes a 1.5 percent downward adjustment to account for the average national ethanol content."
Your 34.9 mpg in a 2014 1.6 L car doesn't seem all that great to me but if it is all city with a payload then that's pretty good. Then again a city in WA like say Perth at the worst is probably much better then a warm city like LA with bad traffic. I would say it's more like Vegas or Phoenix, where I bet some pretty good city averages can be found. I get about 28 mpg all "city" summertime with a 2002 2.5L AWD Forester which drops to 23 in the winter. I don't really try, especially with gas at $1.75 a gallon like it is right now. I think bottled water costs more, glad my car doesn't run on that LOL!
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