First road trip in our 2014 Touring!

Just got back last week from our first road trip in our 2014 Touring that we purchased used (not CPO unfortunately) from a local Mazda dealer back in August. We drove from the Memphis area down to Disney World in Orlando FL. We drove the whole way in 1 day (I drove the whole way, actually) going down there, leaving home about 4 AM central time, and arriving at our AirBnB condo about 7 PM eastern time, about 14 hours total trip time. Drive time was about 11.5-12 hours or so. We split it up and stayed with relatives near Atlanta coming back.

Overall I was quite pleased with the fuel economy of this car. We've been getting 24-26 MPG around town (which includes wife sitting in our son's school pick-up line for as much as 30 minutes idling, 5 days a week), but on the highway, relatively flat terrain we saw over 31 MPG! The trip took just over 5 full tanks of fuel. I always used TopTier 87 octane, and the total fuel cost was right at $120 for the whole trip. We drove just over 1,800 total miles, and used just under 63 gallons of fuel, for a total trip average of 29 MPG. Not bad!

Dash display just before filling up after the best tank. I was surprised to see the range go up to over 400 miles after that!


The first and last tanks were driving between the Memphis area and Atlanta area, which are the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. I guess that's why the MPG is lower there. The middle 3 tanks are from ATL down to Orlando, around town, and then back to ATL.

The key to get better MPG on the long highway trip from our CX-5 is to slow down! If you can keep your speed under 70 mph, your gas mileage would be significant higher. We had a disappointed MPG, at about 28, during our first road trip in our 2016 AWD CX-5 to Houston and Austin last Christmas Holiday. Last week we went down to Houston. We drove at 80~90 mph in 75-mph speed zone on I-45, and we got 27.5 mpg. On the way back to Dallas, I determined to get the best gas mileage I cound get on the highway from our AWD CX-5, I drove below 70 mph all the way. The result? 30.5 mpg. It beats the EPA highway estimate a bit for an AWD CX-5. But I have to say it's very differicult to drive below 70 mph on I-45 all the way as everybody else is driving at least at 80! And I also can tell our AWD CX-5 is not as fuel efficient than other AWD CX-5's as others can easily to achieve EPA rated 30 highway MPG without too much effort driving on the highway!

Winter blend gas has come back, resulting in drops. I expect we'll hear complaints again here soon as with previous winters. Windy weather doesn't help either. I drove to Houston this week with a 20 mph headwind (effectively driving 100 mph, weather wise) and this dropped me under 26.

I forgot to mention, CC set at 74-75 pretty much the whole way, resulting in ~28 in the hilly areas, and ~30-31 in the flatter areas, with 2 adults, 1 kid and rear area full of luggage.