[#SaveTheManuals]

I'm just going to use this thread as my MPG journal (unless someone points out that I missed a sub-forum area that would be more appropriate for this).

This weekend I filled up for the first time since I bought the car. I was unable able to reliably compute MPG since I don't know how full the dealer filled the tank. So the denominator is a little iffy. I also didn't count on not knowing the exact numerator in the equation; the car inconveniently reset the trip meter automatically when I filled up, and I didn't happen to look at the mileage beforehand.

Based on the ~30 miles that were on the car when we bought it, I can surmise that the MPG was about 36.33 -- but this figure isn't going into the books due to the unknown variables. The car's MPG computer said 37.2, so it's probably pretty close.

We needed to fill up because we had a ~130 mile trip into Boston this weekend. I'd say 75% of the mileage was fairly light freeway traffic (65 MPH posted), 20% was slow-and-go to stop-and-go highway traffic (~50 MPH posted), and 5% was typical stoplight-to-stoplight city driving with moderate traffic.

The car computer indicated 42.2 MPG for the entire trip. I'm pretty happy with that. The interesting part is that it was somewhat difficult to get the MPG significantly over 40 MPG on the freeway, but MPG soared in the slow-and-go ~50MPH segment. Other than the lower air drag at the slower speeds, I guess the traffic pattern approximated pulse-and-glide even if I didn't plan it that way.