Everyone's Fuelly MPG seems very high compared to mine. :(

D

dgraham2038

Member
Contributor
:
2016 Mazda CX 5 Grand Touring
These posted Fuelly MPG's seem exaggerated like most guys bench press. 2016 CX5 GT AWD, only use sport mode on freeway merges, not too aggressive on the gas pedal, 3150 miles. Best MPG was 26.2, overall avg. is 24.7, 70% highway, 30% city mix. My last vehicle, who I was happy to give back to my wife, averaged 14.2 so I'm very happy with 24.7 but I can't help but wonder how can I be down with the high 20 mpg club!!!
 
dgraham2038 said:
These posted Fuelly MPG's seem exaggerated like most guys bench press. 2016 CX5 GT AWD, only use sport mode on freeway merges, not too aggressive on the gas pedal, 3150 miles. Best MPG was 26.2, overall avg. is 24.7, 70% highway, 30% city mix. My last vehicle, who I was happy to give back to my wife, averaged 14.2 so I'm very happy with 24.7 but I can't help but wonder how can I be down with the high 20 mpg club!!!
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-Something is wrong with your car
-You can't drive it correctly to get good mileage


This is what I keep getting told on this forum. Good luck.
 
Once you get some more miles on your engine it should loosen up and you should see your mileage improve. We routinely see 24 mpg in a combination of around town and highway miles. Best we've seen on road trips is 28 mpg, that was at 70-75 mph with A/C in use and hilly terrain. Everyone drives differently so you can't really compare your mileage with theirs unless you drive exactly the same.
 
chiefmg said:
Once you get some more miles on your engine it should loosen up and you should see your mileage improve. We routinely see 24 mpg in a combination of around town and highway miles. Best we've seen on road trips is 28 mpg, that was at 70-75 mph with A/C in use and hilly terrain. Everyone drives differently so you can't really compare your mileage with theirs unless you drive exactly the same.
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^Identical to what I am seeing pretty much. 2015 Touring AWD 2.5
 
- Drive below 60 mph on highways
- Avoid short trips
- Keep your tires inflated

EPA combined is 26 mpg. You aren't too far off.
 
CX5_Pete said:
- Drive below 60 mph on highways
- Avoid short trips
- Keep your tires inflated

EPA combined is 26 mpg. You aren't too far off.
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I'd say between 60-70. My work is about 30 minutes away from my house. The highway spurt I take is about half of that. So that's 50/50 roughly for my commute to work. Then add in my driving in my home area which is like the suburbs. Many 30 mph- 45mph roads. Decent amount of lights. After a week or so I'm averaging 28-29mpg. I certainly do more non highway than highway and I am averaging higher than EPA. Easily too.

OP, check tires. Accelerate lightly. Those are two big things. Things in the summer now should definitely bump up. Cars now warm up within a minute.
 
Get a more aerodynamic car, SUVs aren't normally bought because there economical.
 
dgraham2038 said:
These posted Fuelly MPG's seem exaggerated like most guys bench press. 2016 CX5 GT AWD, only use sport mode on freeway merges, not too aggressive on the gas pedal, 3150 miles. Best MPG was 26.2, overall avg. is 24.7, 70% highway, 30% city mix. My last vehicle, who I was happy to give back to my wife, averaged 14.2 so I'm very happy with 24.7 but I can't help but wonder how can I be down with the high 20 mpg club!!!
Click to expand...
Seriously, the reason why your gas mileage is lower than what the Fuelly showing is because you have an AWD CX-5! Fuelly's data are mixed with FWD and AWD CX-5's and you can't distinguish them! There're more FWD CX-5's sold in the US which makes the average MPG on Fuelly looks higher for CX-5. According to EPA 2016 FWD CX-5 is rated at 29 mpg combined but AWD CX-5 is rated at 26 mpg. 3 mpg panelty for having the AWD CX-5 indicates Mazda's i-ActivSense AWD system is not efficient than other brands in the same class as others suffer only 1 mpg. Even Mazda realized its AWD system is not fuel-efficiency friendly and they claimed they did some changes to the AWD system for 2016 CX-5 AWD "to improve the real-world fuel economy". There're many members here are having similar experience like you on disappointed gas mileage and turned out they almost all have AWD! I really envy those who claim getting 30+ mpg on their AWD CX-5 but most AWD CX-5 owners simply can't get such gas mileage, even on the highway!
 
The AWD also adds 160lbs to the vehicle curb weight and has more parasitic drag. Your mileage is not far off from the AWD combined mileage. You will see some improvements in mpg once the car is more broken in. My wife does about 85% highway and brand new her average was about 31, now hovering above 33 mpg. We went out of our way to get the fwd precisely for the mileage and it has delivered.
 
dgraham2038 said:
These posted Fuelly MPG's seem exaggerated like most guys bench press. 2016 CX5 GT AWD, only use sport mode on freeway merges, not too aggressive on the gas pedal, 3150 miles. Best MPG was 26.2, overall avg. is 24.7, 70% highway, 30% city mix. My last vehicle, who I was happy to give back to my wife, averaged 14.2 so I'm very happy with 24.7 but I can't help but wonder how can I be down with the high 20 mpg club!!!
Click to expand...

You're in the ballpark. I have 6,700 miles and average 24.5 mpg. My driving in mostly suburbia. Full highway driving I avg about 30.
Yours should get a little bit better after the first oil change.
 
jhu8 said:
I'd say between 60-70. My work is about 30 minutes away from my house. The highway spurt I take is about half of that. So that's 50/50 roughly for my commute to work. Then add in my driving in my home area which is like the suburbs. Many 30 mph- 45mph roads. Decent amount of lights. After a week or so I'm averaging 28-29mpg. I certainly do more non highway than highway and I am averaging higher than EPA. Easily too.

OP, check tires. Accelerate lightly. Those are two big things. Things in the summer now should definitely bump up. Cars now warm up within a minute.
Click to expand...
Same here with my 2016 AWD. 16 mile commute to work , all two lane roads, light to moderate traffic I consistently average 26-27 mpg. Weekend trips up I-85 to visit my grandsons, 29-31 mpg depending on traffic averaging around 70 mph Very happy with milage I'm getting.
 
On my 2016 AWD GT with Tech, I'm averaging 24.5mpg combining 30% city and 70% highway and I drive conservatively.
100% highway with cruise control at 70mph, I get 28.5mpg.
I'm pleased with these results.
I will add that I haven't seen any improvement in mpg after the 1st oil change and I use Mazda Moly.
 
Mine isn't great. I am hovering around 21 mpg average, very heavily biased towards rush hour city traffic with lots of lights. I get around 28-29 mpg on the highway. I have a 2.5 L AWD.

It's the grinding commute that kills it for me, my 2012 Mazda 3 Sky, with similar driving, only got 24 mpg combined but got up to 37-39 mpg on the highway.

EDIT: Most of the time there is about 325 lb of passengers and I recently got a 50 lb hitch with a 40 lb bike rack that I am keeping on for the summer. I'm not really too concerned.
 
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yrwei52 said:
Seriously, the reason why your gas mileage is lower than what the Fuelly showing is because you have an AWD CX-5! Fuelly's data are mixed with FWD and AWD CX-5's and you can't distinguish them! There're more FWD CX-5's sold in the US which makes the average MPG on Fuelly looks higher for CX-5. According to EPA 2016 FWD CX-5 is rated at 29 mpg combined but AWD CX-5 is rated at 26 mpg. 3 mpg panelty for having the AWD CX-5 indicates Mazda's i-ActivSense AWD system is not efficient than other brands in the same class as others suffer only 1 mpg. Even Mazda realized its AWD system is not fuel-efficiency friendly and they claimed they did some changes to the AWD system for 2016 CX-5 AWD "to improve the real-world fuel economy". There're many members here are having similar experience like you on disappointed gas mileage and turned out they almost all have AWD! I really envy those who claim getting 30+ mpg on their AWD CX-5 but most AWD CX-5 owners simply can't get such gas mileage, even on the highway!
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How do you know more FWD are sold over AWD? Where do you get this data? At least here, many people get AWD so they can drive them to the mountains or do light off-road duty.

CX-5 AWD is only bested by a very short list of other AWD vehicles according to EPA and even then by mostly 1 MPG combined. So it is one of the most efficient AWD system out there. It makes very little sense to compare the MPG difference instead of the EPA rating with other AWD vehicles.

True that Fuelly's data has mixed AWD and FWD data but you can compare variance with direct competitor like CR-V. Based on Fuelly graphs, the CR-V has more variance than the CX-5, which suggests that real-world fuel-economy of the CX-5 is one of the best you can get, in addition to real-world average, more owners get results closer to the average than in a competing CR-V. BTW, CR-V for 2016 has dropped its fuel-economy, perhaps because of the vibration at idle fix.

Some owners think that most everyone else get the same results as they do. Others jump at any publication which measured numbers they like using a single vehicle, sometime driven hard by auto journalists. The numbers from ~130 owners and ~5600 fuel-ups are much more reliable than any one vehicle's measurement.
 
frenchbiker said:
On my 2016 AWD GT with Tech, I'm averaging 24.5mpg combining 30% city and 70% highway and I drive conservatively.
100% highway with cruise control at 70mph, I get 28.5mpg.
I'm pleased with these results.
I will add that I haven't seen any improvement in mpg after the 1st oil change and I use Mazda Moly.
Click to expand...
Almost the same results but ours is getting better gas mileage for daily city driving at about 26 mpg. The complaints are why the AWD suffers so much MPG penalty them FWD CX-5, and the AWD CX-5 is really having a hard time to meet EPA highway estimate at 30 mpg. Many people have no problem to meet or beat EPA highway estimate with FWD CX-5 or many other cars if you really tried, but not on CX-5 AWD!

Yeah I haven't seen any improvement either in gas mileage since new and after the first oil change. I also use Mazda moly oil.
 
yrwei52 said:
Almost the same results but ours is getting better gas mileage for daily city driving at about 26 mpg. The complaints are why the AWD suffers so much MPG penalty them FWD CX-5, and the AWD CX-5 is really having a hard time to meet EPA highway estimate at 30 mpg. Many people have no problem to meet or beat EPA highway estimate with FWD CX-5 or many other cars if you really tried, but not on CX-5 AWD!

Yeah I haven't seen any improvement either in gas mileage since new and after the first oil change. I also use Mazda moly oil.
Click to expand...

I don't think that you actually know it to be true. At most, you have anecdotal evidence, mostly from your own experience.
My anecdotal evidence shows multiple trips of >= 30 MPG, with mostly highway. Just returned from a trip to Yosemite, which included long climb through the Tioga pass, but also the descent into the central valley with a best ever 32.7 MPG (with 91 Octane).
 
yrwei52 said:
Almost the same results but ours is getting better gas mileage for daily city driving at about 26 mpg. The complaints are why the AWD suffers so much MPG penalty them FWD CX-5, and the AWD CX-5 is really having a hard time to meet EPA highway estimate at 30 mpg. Many people have no problem to meet or beat EPA highway estimate with FWD CX-5 or many other cars if you really tried, but not on CX-5 AWD!

Yeah I haven't seen any improvement either in gas mileage since new and after the first oil change. I also use Mazda moly oil.
Click to expand...
Not true. I have no trouble meeting or exceeding epa milage figures with my AWD. And I believe that's true of the majority of AWD owners. Guess it's time for a survey
 
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yrwei52 said:
Almost the same results but ours is getting better gas mileage for daily city driving at about 26 mpg. The complaints are why the AWD suffers so much MPG penalty them FWD CX-5, and the AWD CX-5 is really having a hard time to meet EPA highway estimate at 30 mpg. Many people have no problem to meet or beat EPA highway estimate with FWD CX-5 or many other cars if you really tried, but not on CX-5 AWD!

Yeah I haven't seen any improvement either in gas mileage since new and after the first oil change. I also use Mazda moly oil.
Click to expand...

City driving mpg largely depends on how many miles you drive each time you start the car. I only drive 10 miles per warm-up so my city mpg is lower than longer commuters.
 
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