Quote:
Originally Posted by PaleMelanesian
I can address some of this, having a 2014 Odyssey in my garage right now. Last week we took a road trip 550 miles each way. That's an all day drive, with kids in the back, so I wasn't creeping along. Simply using cruise control at the 65/70 limit except for hills where I took manual control to avoid downshifting.
3 tanks, all 30+ mpg (at the pump as well as on the gauge).
Around town, low 20's. It's a big machine.
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Well Like I said, we did do a similar 29.5 MPG 500 mile trip in our 2011 Chrysler like you described except no cruse and slightly lower speeds but also western Montana 2 lane hills and valleys. We didn't have 3 fill ups as it was all done on a single tank. The more recent 500 mile round trip was down to 27 MPG but that was cruise 70-85 over 3 mountain passes. A normal tank gets us 21mpg with 80% city and 20% highway. The worst I have ever seen is 18 mpg in the dead of winter, warm ups and idling, and aggressive studded snow tires all around town. I'm sure the most recent version of any of the minivans would do a little better but at what cost up front? Our van has 75K on it and has never needed a single repair, just 1 set of brakes and tires, oil changes, wiper blades, an air filter, that's it. The gas cap light came on twice because the cap was loose. On top of that it was about $10k less than anything we could have bought with the same age and mileage from Honda or Toyota, because we shopped them all. We bought it 2 years old with 25K on it for $15k and it's a mid level Touring model. In a few years if the Pacifica Hybrid turns out to be reliable we will buy a 2 year old one. Now that is a big jump in economy as we would probably only have to put gas in it a few times a year and our electricity is pretty reasonable. I even have 240 in our garage already so we could use a faster charger.