mpg drop from steady 32 in summer to 24-26 winter
 

Hi guys ive been working/trying to come up with ways to figure out my mpg loss. Yess it is winter time and yes I do only drive my car 2 miles to work everyday with some highway tripps sometimes/shopping. And saddly yes my accent is a automatic but I am really confused on how I have almost a 30% drop I mean ik im not hitting overdrive since its cold before I get to work etc my driving style has not changed. Im begining to think my car engine is losing efficiency in the cold. I am running full syntactic oil with a partual grill block that I was not running in the summer time. Any ideas I think my o2 senor may be going. Open to any other ideas

Your car is never even close to warming up in just 2 miles. Cold engine=Rich air/fuel mixture=Lousy economy.

Avoid idling as much as possible, leave the heat mixture on the cold setting (fully counterclockwise) unless the car is fully warmed. A block heater would a lot help if you can use one. Combine trips to minimize cold starts. Keep speed under 50 until engine is fully warmed (lock-up torque converter won't lock on a cold engine)

Your car is less effiecent when cold, most are. The differences between summer and winter mpg is going to be more noticeable with shorter trips, and in places with a larger temperature change between summer and winter. When I was consistantly running a short commute I saw a similar difference between summer and winter. If you look through fuel logs with a large number of entries, you will see various levels of the effect.

Block heater is probably your best weapon against the effect

I lose 10 in the winter time, so don't feel bad. I go from 65-70 down to 50-58. But what you are getting is pretty good for such a short commute. You should get a engine blanket, would help a ton.

With only a two mile commute, get a bicycle and a good coat. Thats what I did 7 years ago. Free exercise that is better than coffee to wake you up on the trip in and more free exercise that is great for calming down on the trip home.
And it feels warmer pedaling than sitting in a cold car. Best of all no need to shovel the drive-way before heading out to work.

My gf wont be fond of the coat and bike Idea whennit comes to us working the same shift half the times. Ik all about the short trips, idle and warm up stuff it just came as a shock about the mpg. But then again last year in the winter my job was 5 miles away so thats prob why I didnt have this big of a drop last year.

"Honey, great news: You get to go shopping for clothes!"

I think his chances of getting laid that night will all but vanish with that comment.

Yeah ill be on the couch with that commit I already have to listen to her complain about how I never have the heat on and me driving slow

Turning on the heat in an ICE takes almost no hit on mileage, once the car is warmed up.

Yeah issue is the trip to work the temp gauge isnt even near the warmed up line

So gf complains about it

So ... you could get an EV and preheat it on the charger? ;)

Well the price of gas vs preheating the car with a block heater prob wont pan out well since half of the miles is the trip from work back home. I was thinking of taping more off my grill off only issue I see is tape residue on a painted surface especally duct tape.

You can use orange spray cleaner (I use GooGone) to get the residue off. Blocking the grill doesn't really help much for warm up time, though. The thermostat doesn't open up until the engine is warm, so the radiator doesn't do anything until that happens.

Should also consider that winter blend fuel kills MPG as well.

The fuel itself makes some difference, but not much. The colder weather is the real killer. I notice very little difference when temps are above 40F if I avoid short trips.

21°F this morning with a 25 mile commute to Washington DC & still yielded a respectable 47.7 MPG with only mild hypermiling employed. (~53 MPG in warmer months) Cold weather & winter gas don't kill MPG nearly as much as short trips.

Short trips are a killer in cold weather. A block heater would be about the only thing that will help with any trip under 10 miles in the cold.

When it's below zero, I have trouble getting 20 MPG on the three mile commute to work. When it's in the 80's, I get over 35 MPG.

I did some tests with the block heater, and could not measure a difference in mileage.

Your tire pressure will drop as well. Bump that back up to where it's supposed to be, and your economy should improve slightly. But yeah, the short trips in the cold are just going to murder your fuel economy. Either find a way to heat up the engine before you start it, or just live with the crappy FE.

-soD

Or, drive an EV.

Thanks guys I was making sure there wasnt anything more or less wrong with the car ive never experienced this low of mpg but I also never worked 2 miles away from work so I was more checking to see if this was normalish. Better safe then sorry I always say thats why were all here on this forum anyway. Lol. Iandbi was actually going to get a 2012 honda insight in april so ill def move on up with my mpg