new guidelines refine and clarify the procedures.
That's government talk for what comes next
replace and update sections in the procedure. These are their own words. It is a modified standard which affects many vehicles, especially in highway millage.
You should be fully aware that there're many fuel economy standards and test procedures around the world other than EPA rating from the US; European Union, Japan, Australia, etc. to name a few. And EU fuel consumption numbers are often considerably lower than corresponding US EPA test results for the same vehicle.
Not aware of all other world standards, though I think Australians also like the fuel economy and in some other countries 2L is the top gas engine ... so need to be careful about comparisons. In Australia the CX-5 is rated 31MPG and the 6 35MPG for combined cycle. So, higher than the US. I had the same impression regarding the EU, but I am not really following their ratings. Do you have other number to show?
It's the indication that Mazda fully utilize every gray area of establishing vehicle road-load force and dynamometer settings for the best results.
I don't agree. I think the modified updated test affected 6's results more than others.
The reason for this, I believe, is that getting the very last few MPGs is very hard. If it was easy, we would have many vehicles which cross the 40 MPG level, without an electric motor. As drivers, we still expect at least same amount of power and to drive our cars fast and still be extremely efficient, even when we insist on inefficient form factor of a high riding vehicles that never leave the pavement and not getting a CVT etc. So, any additional load on the engine translates to loss of these last, hard to come-by MPGs.
If you had a gas-guzzler, where engineers never attempted to get high efficiency, then sure, it will not be as sensitive because it already gets crappy MPG.
In any case, I have no reason to believe ill-will or exaggeration in this case (but perhaps I don't know something). It is very likely that Mazda engineers will bring this number up again.
Fuelly's data for CX-5 are mixed with FWD and AWD and there's no way to tell the fuel economy number for AWD only unless you manually examine them one by one.
OR that you consider the variance and see that it is lower than comparable vehicles, like the CR-V and realize that FWD and AWD are not very far apart to get this variance.
The 2nd-gen CX-9 uses full SkyActiv Technology like Mazda6 and CX-5 plus a turbo.
I don't have data to say either way, however, this is an oversimplification.