My Gas Mileage
Feb. 7th, 2006 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI finally brought in the notebook I use to keep track of gas purchases and odometer readings in order to calculate my mileage, which I haven't yet done with my "new" car, a 1991 Honda Civic wagon. I get about 25 miles per gallon in the city, I have a wide range of calculations for highway driving (33, 32, 37, 47) that I don't know what to make of. I suppose it's safe to say that my current car has worse gas mileage than my last car. Disappointing, but then my current car has an automatic transmission.
My last car, a 1984 Nissan Sentra wagon with a standard transmission, got great mileage: 32 city and 38 highway. I remember thinking at the time that I didn't know cars from back in the 1980's could get such good mileage. For my younger readers, we had all these gas shortages in the 1970's, so everyone started buying smaller cars.
I stupidly had thought that people would get better at making cars that get good gas mileage. I mean, cars are all aerodynamically bubble-shaped nowadays, right? Forgetting the trend that people started getting cocky and buying huge cars. Even the same model has grown from year to year. So today's cars have shockingly bad mileage. Every one of you already knew that, right, because you drive cars from the current decade. Anyway, from http://www.fueleconomy.gov/, I looked up some numbers for comparisons.
*my last car (except that 1985 is the oldest year they have) - either 30 city/37 highway or 31 city/39 highway (two versions are described exactly the same way)
*my current car - 28 city/32 highway
New cars I would expect to be better than my last car:
*the 2006 version of my current car - 30/40
*the 2006 hybrid version - 39/41
*Toyota Carolla (5-speed) - 32/41
*Volkswagon new Beetle (5-speed) - 22/31
*Mini Cooper (5-speed) - 28/36
Based on my too-small sample, it looks like no matter how tiny, only a hybrid has significantly better mileage than my last car.
New cars I would expect to be fine:
*PT Cruiser (5-speed) - 22/29
*Scion xb (5-speed) - 30/33
*Toyota Tacoma (5-speed) - 20/27
*Saturn Ion (5-speed) - 25/34
Bleh! Mostly even worse than my current car.
Based on various annoyances with my current car, I've decided to start looking, in a leisurely way, for a "new" car as soon as I've owned my current car for ten years (if it hasn't already fallen apart by then). This car fell into my lap, but next time I want to try harder for a standard transmission and for fewer annoyances like automatic shoulder belts and doors that, if you want to lock them from the outside, you have to either use the key or hold the handle up while pushing the lock down.
My last car, a 1984 Nissan Sentra wagon with a standard transmission, got great mileage: 32 city and 38 highway. I remember thinking at the time that I didn't know cars from back in the 1980's could get such good mileage. For my younger readers, we had all these gas shortages in the 1970's, so everyone started buying smaller cars.
I stupidly had thought that people would get better at making cars that get good gas mileage. I mean, cars are all aerodynamically bubble-shaped nowadays, right? Forgetting the trend that people started getting cocky and buying huge cars. Even the same model has grown from year to year. So today's cars have shockingly bad mileage. Every one of you already knew that, right, because you drive cars from the current decade. Anyway, from http://www.fueleconomy.gov/, I looked up some numbers for comparisons.
*my last car (except that 1985 is the oldest year they have) - either 30 city/37 highway or 31 city/39 highway (two versions are described exactly the same way)
*my current car - 28 city/32 highway
New cars I would expect to be better than my last car:
*the 2006 version of my current car - 30/40
*the 2006 hybrid version - 39/41
*Toyota Carolla (5-speed) - 32/41
*Volkswagon new Beetle (5-speed) - 22/31
*Mini Cooper (5-speed) - 28/36
Based on my too-small sample, it looks like no matter how tiny, only a hybrid has significantly better mileage than my last car.
New cars I would expect to be fine:
*PT Cruiser (5-speed) - 22/29
*Scion xb (5-speed) - 30/33
*Toyota Tacoma (5-speed) - 20/27
*Saturn Ion (5-speed) - 25/34
Bleh! Mostly even worse than my current car.
Based on various annoyances with my current car, I've decided to start looking, in a leisurely way, for a "new" car as soon as I've owned my current car for ten years (if it hasn't already fallen apart by then). This car fell into my lap, but next time I want to try harder for a standard transmission and for fewer annoyances like automatic shoulder belts and doors that, if you want to lock them from the outside, you have to either use the key or hold the handle up while pushing the lock down.
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no subject
on 2006-02-07 11:05 pm (UTC)My next car is going to be a hybrid. This one has to die first, though.
no subject
on 2006-02-20 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-02-07 11:11 pm (UTC)