Best Of

I finally brought in the fuel log from the Sportage and uploaded it to my spreadsheet.

In the almost 9 months she's had the car, my stepdaughter is averaging about 30.5 MPG - far less than the EPA estimates. I suspect this is because a majority of her driving is done on the highway, which lessens the impact of the hybrid drivetrain.

And also - according to my wife, who rides shotgun with her - she has a lead foot. I've put every tank of gas into the car so far, and on the short drive home, I can get the in-car MPG meter to get up to 33-34 MPG, using EV mode exclusively in our housing development. Somehow, I suspect my stepdaughter isn't feathering the gas enough to enable EV mode a whole lot when not on the highway.

I'm putting 91 octane into it, and the most I've spent per gallon is $3.82, the least $2.94. A tank lasts approximately 3 weeks, so far, and she'll put just over 6000 miles on it in the first year.

I've been tracking the mileage of the Outback since I became the primary driver towards the end of 2019, and we're getting about 21 MPG since then. The worst tank was just under 18MPG; the best, a touch over 24.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

This is why we use our Sportage PHEV mostly around town and keep it charged. Can’t remember the last time we bought gas. When we took it on our cross country trip, mileage was not great, not much better than the Buick Encore it replaced.

She really wanted the PHEV model, but it was outside of her budget, even with all the incentives factored in (special EV/PHEV incentive in CO) - and, we weren't keen on getting a charger installed at the house.

I’d say she made a good choice if she does a lot of highway driving. The gas mileage on the PHEV isn’t any better and it may in fact be worse because of the heavy battery.

Finally …. A beach day!

Curious - what's the water temp there in NJ? I know in CA the Pacific was never that warm - 60's for the most part, IIRC. Wasn't much fun in just a bathing suit.