Honda Accord Real World MPG

dudleyr

Let us know how the sacangauge install goes - you will enjoy having it.

jonahdog

Is the scangauge as effective in manual as auto? How much improvement did you actually notice after using it?

dudleyr

I would say it is more effective with a manual because you have more control over the engine. You can really see the benefits of coasting and taking a different route that may be a little longer but has fewer stops.

tankbeans

...for how much extra time I would spend in the car on my drive to work at 60 versus 75 and the result (I live 13 miles from work):

60 mph = 13 min (that was an easy one)
70 mph = 11.14 min
75 mph = 10.4 min

The difference is tiny (in terms of time) but the difference in mileage is presumably much larger. I've decided that speeding just doesn't help and am teaching myself to laugh at those who speed past me just to slam on the breaks 1/4 mile ahead. I'll report how well I do on speed limit only driving in a couple weeks.

guitar4him

I used to ride in the "fast" lanes doing 73-74 in a 65 zone. Then, last year, after I had my ScanGuage for a couple of months, I decided to try an experiment. I started riding in the "slow" lanes doing 67-68 in a 65 zone. I was amazed at the results. I started getting more than 4 mpg better gas mileage in my 2008 Accord LX I-4. It really does make a difference. Now, for almost a year, I've been driving that way. You're right about the times....it doesn''t make a huge difference. I did find that it makes a huge difference in my "peace" level. Now, when I see a cop clocking speeders, I don't slam on the brakes....I just grin and keep rolling. It becomes pretty amusing watching all the folks wizzing by trying to be "NASCAR wanabees".

tallman1

I've mentioned this before but everyone has to do it to appreciate the peace you feel by moving to the right and going the speed limit or lower. I can't say I drive like that all the time but it is amazing.

There's a mental thing with time. When you are in a hurry, you press because you feel like you are controlling the situation. However, when you look at the time differential, it ain't much.

tankbeans

For me there is always a disconnect between what the speedometer says and how fast that car feels like it's going. At 70 I feel like I'm going 55 and, therefore, feel like I should speed up. I'm working very hard to overcome this impulse and I'm working to make CC my best friend. Old habits die hard, but perseverance will win out.

tankbeans

I just got this little bugger on Saturday and the install couldn't have been easier. I wrapped the extra cord around an air outlet (I think that's what it is, either way it had two large openings), snaked it, and tucked it inside, the trimming for the footwell and fed the cable up through my steering column. Since my car no longer has the cubby I mounted it at an angle near the temp guage and under the fuel gauge. My odometer reset button is behind, but since I'll have to update it when I fill up that's not a problem.

I knew that idling was rough, but the other day I realized that it can drop your average (current on the gauge) by about 4 mpg in about 6 minutes. Ouch.

So far it's been about what I would guess. I didn't immediately fill up after I hooked it up since I had refilled about 20 minutes before and based on my observations before (I used to guesstimate based on where the fuel guage was reading knowing that for "half" tank I would get 160 miles (23 mpg).)

Long story short I think I'll learn a lot for from this than trying on my own. I've gotten fairly good, but there are times when I get away from myself.

rcummelin

FWIW, new (12xx miles) 2010 Accord EX-L V6 Sedan on a R-T from Grand Junction, CO to Laughlin, NV, we average 25.5 to 27.x mpg at 75-85 mph, using CC as much as possible. Interesting to see the ECO light still on at 85 mph.

Hoping for better, but boy does this car drive nice at 85!

kevman3

2001 4 cylinder 5-speed still getting 32 mpg highway, and running great. Never has any problems...

packer3

For the 08 and up LXP Accord, you will never average 20mpg in the city period and 30 on the high way. That is a fact even with all the tricks of more air in the tires, higher octane, etc BS, it is what it is so live with it, other wise before you buy your next car read the threads so you don't become one of the victums.

stickguy

since 1/2, I have been doing long commuting again (45 miles each way). Mostly highway, but often not moving (easily could be doing 65 and 1/2 mile later creeping for 10 minutes, then back to moving.) So, not usually steady state, esepcially on the return trip.

Even with the cold, and some local short hops mixed in, still getting just about 32 overall (31-33 depending on the tank).,

pure around town (when working from home, and doing all short hops) has been about 25-26 since I put new tires on last spring.

jhinsc

For the 08 and up LXP Accord, you will never average 20mpg in the city period and 30 on the high way. That is a fact even with all the tricks of more air in the tires, higher octane, etc BS, it is what it is so live with it, other wise before you buy your next car read the threads so you don't become one of the victims.

You may not, but other driver do, and do it consistently. It depends on how you drive, weather conditions, warm-up period, which should be 30 sec. or less assuming you don't have to brush off snow or scrap ice/frost, and if you are one to use your left foot for braking and always keep your foot on the brake pedal. I have an 08 V6 and average 25 - 27 mpg in combined driving.

dpmeersman

As do I with my 08 V6. If you drive on a regular basis where the terrain is hilly I think the 6 will get better fuel economy then the 4 as we don't have to mash the throttle as aggressively to achieve cruising speed.

imscf

I agree about not getting more than 20 mpg in city driving. I average about 17-18 mpg in city driving on my 2008 Accord EX-4. I drive in NYC's outer boroughs (NOT in Manhattan!)

tallman1

If you drive on a regular basis where the terrain is hilly I think the 6 will get better fuel economy then the 4

I don't believe that would be the case.

dudleyr

While the 6 can be very efficient, I also don't think it would do better than the 4 even in the hills. My 4 (stick shift) has never needed a down shift on any hill on any highway.

As for an I4 not getting 30 mpg on the highway I feel the opposite. I don't think it is possible to get less than 30 mpg if you drive the speed limit. In fact If you really stick to the speed limit, I think less than 35 mpg is highly unlikely.

Remember this is for pure highway, not fill it up drive around for a day, take a trip, drive around at your destination, then drive back and fill up in a few days.

packer3

There you go again more mirrors to get better mileage, take your car into the city NY would be good, I will bet anything you will get between 16\18mpg if your lucky, you can't go by mixed driving especially if you are doing heavy driving on the highway, besides you sure don't your car V6 tops out at around 29 on ta good day on the highway. Also take your foot off the brake otherwise the rears will wear out in 15,000 vs 20,000 miles. You must live in Canada

jhinsc

Trying to make sense of your response......?

dudleyr

Just because some of us have the misfortune of driving in a city like New York does not mean we should all judge our mileage by those standards.

34.2 mpg lifetime (79,900 miles) in my 2007 Accord SE I4.

ezshift5

I have an 08 V6 and average 25 - 27 mpg in combined driving.

That is what my Gen7 6M averages around our state capital (60% freeway).

Speaking of freeway, returning from Arizona/SoCal recently, I drove from Gorman to Lodi (slightly downhill initially): 288 miles on 7.25 gallons of Chevron 87 (added 20oz of Techron fuel system/injector cleaner)

Calculations show an amazing 39.6 MPG. A Crown Royal (or two) is overdue here

best, ez.

dpmeersman

Amazing! I'm halfway thru my central Mass to West coast of Florida and back. First leg I stopped @ 551.4 miles and topped off with 16.612 of 87 oct Shell for 33.19 MPG. Damn good stuff by my standards but pales in comparison with yours. Makes me wonder what the gen 8 sedan with a six speed manual might get but I'll never know. In the mean time I'm happy with my car despite a few VCM quirks but 268 HP and 3600 pounds and returning an occasional 30 MPG's +, is not to shabby.

boqibama

quitar4him, I saw your outside temperature gauge installation back in 2008, and wondering if the place you place your sensor in is good? that double side sticker is easy to fall off, right?

tankbeans

I've spent 4 weeks with Scangauge and have managed to increase my mileage to 27.9 mpg. Now for those last 2 to push above 30, which is what I struggled with before and I have a 40 mile round trip.

Also, I've found that since going 70 isn't significantly faster than 60 I've been trying to find people who are loafing along the freeway so I can go slow, but won't get the dirty looks from people who think I'm slowing them down. There are so many times when people blow past me on the freeway at 75 and I'm going the limit only to have me catch up at the next exit.

Also, dudley (I believe it's you), did you have to adjust the speed reading on yours to match up with the car? Mine seems to read 2 mph slower than the OEM speedo and has thus been skewing some of the results. If so, since your car is almost the same as mine, how much did you have to adjust it?

Yesterday on my way home I managed to crack 34mpg (in current not tank).

dudleyr

I can't remember if I had to adjust the speed or not. I do know it is typical for speedos to be 1 or two mph high. Compared to my gps, my Accord speedo is about .5 to 1 mph high. My integra was 3-4 mph too high.

I would make sure the odo of the car matches that of the scangauge. If the odo is correct the time is going to be correct and speed is just a calculation once you have those two.

I am jealous of the latest model. If you set it up right you can display up to 4 mpg stats at once (mine only does one at a time). So you can have current, tank, yesterday and today all displayed at once. It really lets you see how flooring it up one steep hill affects a whole tank.

tankbeans

I think I can do 4 at once. I wouldn't know which is which though. The trip on the gauge is usually off about 4 miles as compared to the car itself. It only gets further skewed as I put more miles on. Do you adjust it evey time you fill up by bringing the amount of gas used (according to the gauge) to that which is actually pumped in or do you just leave it?

dudleyr

You should be able to adjust the odo on the setup of the scangauge to match that of your car.

Once I get the mpg dialed in pretty well (gallons used is always close to what I pump) I don't mess with that correction until the seasons change. Need to take a few % off for the winter months.

car_love

I leased a 2007 Accord VP back in June 2007. i4 VTEC Auto. Got around 35mpg-38mpg highway for 1.5 hour drives with a fairly fresh oil change. Lowest octane cheap gas, low insurance and 5-star safety is hard to beat for a car that requires little to no maintenance ever except for oil changes until 100k miles.

With mixed driving about 60/40 city/highway, I'd reach half tank mark around 165-175 miles usually and cost $20 bucks to fill up half a tank in California.

Drove a pal's 2008 V6 80/20 highway/city - got around 31mpg highway/21mpg city. Very nice to have the power though, quick acceleration for an Accord too.

I just traded the Accord in for a Nissan 350z which is averaging about 19mpg 50/50 city/highway. LOVE IT!

emenga

$28.7mpg. 70% highway and 30% local. I have 2 passenger and me, the driver.

emenga

The second tank of fuel only gives 25MPG and we drove 400miles on 16gal gas. We did drove 150miles less highway than the first tank of gas.

I am alittle bit disappointed, my old minivan Quest can do 20MPG on exactly same driving condition and same route.

hypermile

Hey, so I'm reading the posts here and it seems best performers are the ones with scanguage info. Are there any general techniques you guys have learned that you could teach us non-scanguage owning drivers out there to maximize mileage?

So far, in a 1 month old 2010 accord EXL V6 I've been avoiding going over 2000 rpm on low speed accelerations, and pretty strictly never above 2500 rpm at higher speeds or when I really need to accelerate "hard". Also when coasting I attempt to keep the eco light on for as long as possible. I also do DWB- a hypermiler term for driving with buffer- keeping good enough distance ahead of me so that I can coast to a low speed at lights and accelerate with traffic without stopping.

I'd mainly like to know whether using the Eco light is good enough or are there finer techniques that I need. I notice that while eco light is on, I can either decelerate at a slow pace, maintain speed, or even accelerate slowly.... so there seems to be a lot of room and therefore some mileage efficiency curve to work with.

Also I'd like to know is accelerating at 2k rpm the most efficient, or is there a different target or sweet spot? How slow is so slow it hurts efficiency, and how fast is too fast?

So far I haven't re-filled the tank yet, so I will report how I did with the above techniques later.

dpmeersman

One month on the same tank would indicate that your fuel expenses aren't high to begin with, at least for this past month. You'll continue to due well just following some simple rules. Using slight pressure on the accelerator and no abrupt stops, and you're going to get what fuel economy you're vehicle is capable of. Most of the time you will see that in average around town driving or rural roads your going to be between 1,200 & 2,500 RPM most of the time. Neither lug or over rev a cold engine and try to keep it around 2,000 RPM or better when pulling that 3,600+ pounds up hills.
Your engine is still quite tight and your MPG's will improve gradually over the first 10,000 miles. Oh, and on occasion remember you've got a reasonably peppy V6 under the hood, so disregard the above advise, and when conditions permit it, goose the sucker and put a smile on your face, otherwise you may have been better served with a four cylinder.

hypermile

so I just filled my tank and calculated out 21MPG for the first month.

Will take your advice for now... similar to what I've been doing so far from the sound of it.

Just wanna know if trying to keep Eco light on as long as possible does anything for fuel economy or if i'm boring myself for no reason.

dpmeersman

You can think of the ECO light as an indication of non aggressive driving and as such you are getting optimum fuel economy when it's on. If you would like more information on some of the ways that your V6 is going about saving fuel & reducing emissions do an internet search on PZEV. You may already know that this stands for Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle. It borrows some of the technology from hybrid vehicles. One feature these engines have is that while coasting with no pressure on the accelerator at all, the various mechanical components of your drivetrain are in motion but the fuel injectors are off. With no fuel being burned there are fuel economy benifits as well as nothing, nada, zip, zero emissions leaving your tailpipe. I'm making the assumption that your car has this feature but now that I think about it this is dependent on point of sale. California and the Northeast states will have these vehicles as it's mandated others don't.
Once your engines broken in boring yourself as you started on long hwy trips can return up to 33 MPG's. Same trip while digging a little deeper into the throttle out of toll booths and getting around those big rigs on the hwy so you can see where you are going, will still return a healthy 28-30 MPG's, very respecatable for it's size and weight.

tankbeans

I'm making the assumption that your car has this feature.

For what it's worth my car does this too, and I have an 03 LX. A step down from his and a few years older. I only know this because I recently bought a Scan Guage and have been working with it to optimize economy and it reads 9999 MPG when coasting down hill (usually they will only shut down when in top gear).

That being said with my 03 LX 4-cyl I've been averaging 26-28 with a 70/30 city/highway. I consider myself lucky.

ezshift5

...........looks as if the winter fuel blues are over for this year:

1228 miles May - June. About 45 1/2 gallons of 87. No complaints from this sailor.

ez....

thommy135

Just got my new Accord EX.....Average 28 mpg on first 2 tanks of fuel.

Skeezicks_02889

dudleyr

Saw some of the info on the Accord mid cycle refresh. Looks like mpg will go up by about 2 for the 4 cyl. Nice to see that improvement. Might make the gen 8 bump past the gen 7, though sometimes hard to tell without real world numbers. The EPA can be "tricked".

Unfortunately they did not go to a 6 speed manual like toyota, but they are introducing a very tempting SE model that has leather and power seats. Basically an ex-l without the sunroof (or the more powerful engine), which is what I have wanted for a long time.

Can't really justify since my car looks and runs like new - maybe in two years right before the next gen comes out.

Mpg has moved up in the warm weather. 10 tank average is back up to 36.2 and lifetime is at 34.3. Hoping to get lifetime to 35 by the end of the summer.

Some tanks are a little bit down as my 14 year old has his learner permit (yes the age is 14 in South Dakota) and I am teaching him how to drive a stick with the Accord. Lots of stop and go to practice - with the occasional stall and/or lurch.

2007 I4 SE MT 85K

catmike

Hey, Dudleyr... your mileage is terrific.... ! Your son will thank you sometime in the future for all the patience and training on a stick. He'll be able to almost drive anything ! Good job.

ezshift5

I'm green with you know what looking at your fuel efficiency numbers. My sole consolation is my 6M and it's QM ET.

Seriously, y'all are one great indemnification/boost for the Honda four cylinder.

all the best ez..........

(about 26 1/2 lifetime average) :surprise:

rrbhokies

For all you hyper milers out there that may have some insight as to improving fuel economy for those of us with automatic transmissions:

1) Is it safe while at a full stop at a long stop light to take the car out of drive and put it in neutral?

2) Is it safe while at a full stop at a very long stop light for like 2 minutes to turn the car off, and then turn it back on when the light turns green.

3) Is it safe to put the automatic transmission into neutral and then after you make a full stop, put it back in drive.

4) Is it safe to put the automatic transmission into neutral and then coast down a large hill, but then shift back into drive while the car is still traveling at speed?

5) Do any of the four strategies listed above do anything to help improve fuel economy? Do any of them potentially do more harm than good to the transmission?

thegraduate

It is irresponsible to eliminate the ability to quickly and instinctively react in an emergency situation. Taking the extra time to think about cranking the car could be all the time it takes to turn a near-miss into a big hit.

Also, keeping your car in drive while moving down a hill will use less gas than freewheeling in neutral, contrary to instinct. Also, for the same reason as listed above, you need to be able to act immediately upon a given situation, removing your car from gear will hinder that ability. I can't imagine putting your car in gear from neutral (in an automatic) while moving at speed can do anything but harm to your transmission.

rcummelin

We just drove a 1200 mile round-trip from Grand Junction, CO to Phoenix, AZ.

Average mileage was between 30 and 31 mpg.

For me, that's outstanding for a V6 sedan. I'm a happy camper!!!

jonahdog

What year is your V6??

rcummelin

We have a 2010 Accord EX-L V6 sedan with VCM. This trip was mostly on 2-lane highway at speeds of 65-70 mph. I actually could feel some of the VCM transitions that others complain about, but only once in a great while.

bulldogbob

I called one of the major mail-order auto supply companies and wanted to order a K&N air filter for my 2000 Honda Civic that currently gets 23-24 mpg city. They steered me toward purchasing a complete intake kit advising that this would give me the most mpg improvement. Would the cost of the intake kit give my vehicle a significant enough improvement in mpg over filter alone to justify the $200 cost? Would it be worth the investment to replace my current original factory spark plug wire set with a 0 ohm resistance set?
I appreciate your feedback.

bulldogbob

I called one of the major mail-order auto supply companies and wanted to order a K&N air filter for my 2000 Honda Civic that currently gets 23-24 mpg city. They steered me toward purchasing a complete intake kit advising that this would give me the most mpg improvement. Would the cost of the intake kit give my vehicle a significant enough improvement in mpg over filter alone to justify the $200 cost? Would it be worth the investment to replace my current original factory spark plug wire set with a 0 ohm resistance set?
I appreciate your feedback.

stephen987

Bob, you might have better luck in a Civic forum. . .

kingfans1

you should be getting that kind of mpg for highway driving, with or without VCM. I hope you enjoy your accord.

bulldogbob

I called one of the major mail-order auto supply companies and wanted to order a K&N air filter for my 2000 Honda Accord that currently gets 23-24 mpg city. They steered me toward purchasing a complete intake kit advising that this would give me the most mpg improvement. Would the cost of the intake kit give my vehicle a significant enough improvement in mpg over filter alone to justify the $200 cost? Would it be worth the investment to replace my current original factory spark plug wire set with a 0 ohm resistance set?
I appreciate your feedback.