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Comments
However, on the highway trip we went to a month ago, 400 miles one way with 6 people and little luggage, I got 20 miles per gallon, this time it was almost 100% highway trip.
Will report back after I had upcoming trip re highway mpg.
Let us know what mileage you get when you've driven that part of the interstate (or any similar hwy). You did not even say what type of roads you got your mileage. And in case you've driven I-81 (or similar hwy) w/ your Pilot and got a much lower mpg, then I'm sorry you just have to dream on, kid.
Some vehicles simply will not do that, and some drivers simply can not do that.
Others can and do.
When I choose to drive our Pilot at 75+ with the AC Compressor and cruise running continuously, we will average somewhere in the 19-21 MPG range. Which is how the EPA is testing them now.
At 65 with AC and cruise running continuously we can expect more in the 22-23 MPG range.
Under ideal conditions, during mild weather when the "AC" compressor can be off most of the time, expect another + 1-2 mpg.
Now here is the "kicker" that most drivers simply are not capable of doing.
Keep in mind that traffic conditions must always be considered.
Keep in mind that traffic conditions must always be considered.
Keep in mind that traffic conditions must always be considered.
I've done this and it works. Drive at 60 mph. On hilly roads turn off the cruise. Accelerate slightly toward the bottom of downhill grades to say 65 mph and hold a steady foot. (Gravity is helping) The car will go farther up the next hill before downshifting. It will most likely be slowing down. That's OK! It will build speed again after it tops the hill. Never try to gain speed while going up hill, you are fighting gravity and wasting a lot of fuel.
This will earn another 1-3 MPG, depending on driver skills, road conditions, wind, and traffic. Do the math and you will come up with 26-28 mpg possible.
On flat roads, set the cruise at 60 and let it do it's thing. Something else to keep in mind is the effect of head winds. Driving at a given speed against a 10 mph head wind will burn "Nearly" as much fuel as driving 10 mph faster on a calm day. Of course rolling resistance of the tires, engine rpm and so forth will figure in. Not much we can do about the weather!
My point is this! The Pilot, like any SUV, has a lot of frontal area. That adds up to a lot of wind resistance. Wind resistance formula is Frontal Area (FA) times the Speed squared .
Example: at 75 the wind resistance would be FA (X) (75X75). = FA X 5625.
Example: at 60 the wind resistance would be FA (X) (60X60). = FA X 3600.
These examples show the wind resistance at 75 mph to be 56% higher than at 60 mph. Add in the FA of the Pilot and the mileage is greatly affected by speed. These figures don't mean you will burn 56% more fuel at 75 vs 60, but it will have a lot of influence.
Hope that helps to answer the "Questionable" part for ya.
Your Pilot may or may not be capable, and the driver may or may not be capable.
However "REAL World" for most drivers is to drive 5-10 over the posted limits, with cruise and AC on. They can expect the EPA ratings.
Kip
FYI: It has dealer installed 20inch rims with Nitto Tires (NT420S, 255/45R20 - Which are A rated - THE BEST)
HELP!!
That's a good point! Other forms of friction losses (internal friction, improperly inflated tires and so forth) do not mysteriously disappear when you speed up from 60 to 75 mph.
tidester, host
SUVs and Smart Shopper
I heard a long time ago that you can make a car with auto transmission upshift when you want it by releasing the gas pedal slightly (like on a manual transmission when you need to step on the clutch and release the gas pedal --- but not that much). So I tried it when I started driving cars w/ auto transmission. Well, it worked for me and the practice has stuck with me all these years. Note that if I do this with the rpm too low, the car won't upshift. So when the car reaches 2500 rpm or a little bit more, I release the gas pedal slightly and it shifts to the next gear. I do this for the 1st and 2nd gears. At the very least, I've avoided the 3000 rpm shifts and maybe saved some gas as a result of reaching the higher gears faster.
Ok folks, just wanted to share this....
My neighbor's 07 Ridgeline and my son's 08 Ridgeline do the same.
Read somewhere that the automatics of today "learn" the driving style of the driver and shift accordingly. Could be something to that!
My heavy footed wife primarily drives the CR-V. I've noticed that when I drive it, it seems to want to shift at around 2800, even with a light foot, and even when warm.
Recently we were catching up on some errands and visiting. We used the CR-V and I drove. It was an all day affair. Try as I may, it refused to shift at below 2800.
Total miles for the day were a little over 100, with a lot of it back roads and some local. Just before arriving home, it started shifting at 2300. I dropped my wife off at the house and went back out. Sure enough it was shifting at 2300. Next morning I ran some quick errands and it was still shifting at 2300, once warm. A few days later, after she drove it to work and so forth, I took it out again. It was shifting at 2800 again. Even when warm.
Kip
However, I believe you can still do it with a heavier foot when necessary, but you need to take a glance at the tachometer to check the rpm (since engines are much quieter now) --- I'm still "experimenting" with the Pilot on this, maybe w/ practice I can do it without looking everytime.
The average I got was 21.8 mpg. I have an 07 EX-L AWD Pilot with about 10K miles on it. Frankly I think this is decent mileage for the space practicality of the pilot. Of course if I wanted 35 mpg, I could buy the Honda Fit, but you can't buy a large SUV and then complain about the mileage. I am almost certain that pilot will give a better avg that similar sized SUVs.
Also one thing to note when you see some really alarmist posting on this forum. Click on the person's name and see when they joined edmunds. You will find that there are many who sign up and and then post a nasty thread about the vehicle on the same day and then you never hear from them again. My hunch is that it is someone who is maybe selling a competing brand, etc...
You can know when a user joined by clicking on their username in the posting.
Joe
Check any brake drag touching 1 wheel. That may cause poor mileage.
New 2009 Pilot Touring 19 MPG CITY!
Just purchased a month ago and was looking for actual mpg city on internet for 09 Pilot when saw and signed up to this forum. Got 19.2 mpg city twice, no highway. Key was to be really slow off the line and to coast to stops if possible. I drove like I had a raw egg under foot and watched the mpg meter like a hawk. Traded my 07 pilot EX in. Some of 19.2 is due to the new 6-4-3 engine and the rest is to back off of the throttle I believe. I live in a mostly flat road driving town of 180,000 and can traverse it in usually 15 minutes. Now it takes about 20 mins cause I miss some lightes when accelerating slowly. The 07 typically got 14.5 to 15 mpg city so you know how I use to drive. I will save at least 15% on the gas bill if I keep up the sensible driving technique. There is a real urge to keep ahead of the traffic though! Bad habits die hard. Wife is getting about 17-18 mpg. I make it a game to see if I can out do her. WE LOVE THIS CAR! WE LOVE THE LOOK! Great handling, lower road noise, more interior room and a lot of electronic gismos.
What is a typical day of driving for you?
Is it a commute to and from work? If so, how far is it one way and how long does it take to make the trip? What type of load are you carrying? Are there traffic lights, one after the other, Is the traffic crawling bumper to bumper , or moving well ?
Or is it driving all day, such as a sales rep, shuttle, courier, and such.
Reason for these questions; City driving can mean so many things to different people. The big city dweller with lots of stop and go and idling at traffic lights and so forth will burn considerably more fuel than the small town dweller that has little idle time and keeps moving most of the time.
Keep in mind that the reason highway millage is so much better than "City" driving is that the highway driver doesn't use the brakes nearly as often. A small town driver, uses them much less than the big city driver. The amount of "brake" usage is a good indicator of the type of mileage ( good or bad) one can expect from their vehicle.
Example a person that tends to tail gate is on the brake/gas-brake/gas more often, and will get worse mileage than the driver that keeps more distance from the car ahead and drives with a steady foot. Every time that near 4500# Pilot is accelerated, either from a stop or just regaining speed, extra fuel is used.
Driving the car at 0-20 MPH and being in 1st or 2nd gear for 5 miles and 20 -30 minutes will burn considerably more fuel than the car that is traveling 5 miles at 35-40 with few stops for 10-15 minutes.
My "City" commute involves 1-3 stop signs , and 4-8 traffic lights, and 3-6 turns onto different roads depending on the route. It is about 7 miles and takes 15 minutes on a good day and 20 minutes on a not so good day. Some days I don't get stopped by any of the traffic lights. Some days I get stopped by all of them.
This Pilot calculates to 17-19 mpg every time it gets filled up.
On the road at 80+mph with the air on 100% and 4 adults, it will average about the same, 17-19. At 65 with little use of the AC and the same load, it will average 23-24 mpg. At 70 with 2 adults and 100% AC it averages 22-23 mpg. At 60 mph with 2 adults and little AC usage, it will average in the 26 to 27 range.
Driving conditions, speed, and the driver all make up the "real world" mileage of any particular vehicle.
Kip
So spaketh "The One". :lemon:
Here are some details if anyone is interested:
2004 Pilot EX-L
73,000 miles
Mobil1 5W-20
Tires 40 PSI
4 adults and 3 kids with most of the gear on a Hitch-Haul rack.
Round trip of 1,431 miles.
Average speed of 71.8 MPH.
Essentially 100% highway.
Had somewhat of a tailwind on both legs of the trip measured by flags on flagpoles that we passed.
We have only had one trip that gave better mileage, but that was with less people and gear.
As a follow up to an earlier post of mine....We just got back from a road trip from KC to Destin, FL.
Here are the details:
2004 Pilot EX-L
77,000 miles
Mobil1 5W-20
Tires 38 PSI
2 adults and 3 kids with all of the gear inside this time.
Round trip of 2,384 miles.
Cruise set at 70-75 MPH.
Essentially 100% highway with about 200 miles of local driving in Destin.
A/C 95% of the time.
No tailwinds on this trip, only side and headwinds.
Yielded 22.8 MPG over the entire trip. I am fairly pleased with that considering the conditions.
About 30 of the 343 miles was local driving. 2 adults, 1 Seven year old and about 75# of luggage. Tire pressure at 33# and temperature ranging from 80 in the morning to 92 in the afternoon. Got stuck in serious "crawling" traffic coming back through Atlanta. They are doing road construction with 3 lanes closed, and the Braves had a game. Took nearly an hour to go 2 miles in that mess. We were stopped more than we were moving.
Other than the "crawling", the cruise was set about 95% of the time at 65 mph and I let it do it's thing. No hyper-mileing on my part. So it downshifted early on the up hill grades. ( Plenty of those in North Georgia) AC was on about 75% of the time. Total miles driven were 343.6 and fuel used was 13.7 gallons = 25.08 mpg.
I feel that the "crawling " part, likely used at least an extra gallon in that hour. As we would have gone 65 miles instead of 2 miles. So subtracting just 1 gallon, the mileage could have been closer to 27 mpg for pure highway.. Recon there is always something that can mess up a good thing.
Kip
We're usually averaging in the low 20s for mileage here in Northern New England....hilly commutes of usually over 10 miles one way....and generally we experience 23-25 mpg on longer trips in the region. Most of the roads we travel are two-laners (our closest interstate is about 50 miles away) with 50-55 speed limits. In summer last year we achieved 25.7 on a 400 mile round trip, with speeds around 50-55, all on two-lane roads, some hilly terrain, little use of the air conditioner, some use of the cruise control. I always factor in the odometer error, which is currently running at 2.3% (for every actual 100 miles driven, the odo will show 102.3). And if I can't fill up at the same gas station, I try to make sure on these mileage runs that I at least fill up at a station at the same approximate elevation as the previous one. There will always be some inaccuracies, but the more we measure, the more MPG data we get, and the errors eventually cancel out to a large degree.
But that's old news.....again, a couple of months ago, we got 25.1 MPG in similar driving conditions, similar temperatures, etc etc, on a 326 mile round trip. On this run I was struck by how long you can coast, say on a downhill portion, or when slowing down for a lower speed limit as you approach a town, without hindering traffic. But that's in low traffic density situations. We are considerate of drivers behind us! We haven't had a chance to do much urban driving, but I strongly agree with the poster who explained that there are different types of "city" driving, and that the amount of idle time stuck in traffic (the times you're getting zero MPG) has a big influence on overall MPG.
Please pardon my digression here....but I'm recalling an 8,000 mile trip from Sacramento to Boston and back, with a side trip through Canada, that I took in 1972.....driving a 1965 split-window VW bus. After that trip I vowed I'd never take a VW bus on the road again.....although it was reliable and reasonably comfortable, it was like driving an empty cardboard box....the vehicle was constantly at the mercy of any wind, with crosswinds and headwinds a major problem! However, even back then I was tracking gas mileage.....my log shows that we got low 20s most of the time (sound familiar?) and on the Eastbound leg through Nebraska on I-80, with a tailwind, we got 25 MPG. Even back then a 7-passenger vehicle with lousy aerodynamics and a carbureted engine could get that much under the right conditions....and admittedly, the boxlike shape of the bus enhanced the effect of the tailwind.
Finally, one poster recently suggested that drivers who claim 25 MPG or higher on their Pilots are using crack. Well, I've never used crack or any other illegal drug, and I have no plans to. I checked Edmunds' gas mileage recommendations, and then checked other websites for information on how to get good gas mileage. Nowhere could I find that using crack has any effect on gas mileage, so I'm not sure why that poster would make a comment like that. Have a great day. feet2fire
Posters like you are describing come and go. They generally don't have the intelligence to discuss a topic. They just make their stupid statements and run hide! Or maybe the monitors throw them off.
Your post was informative.
Kip
Averaging 17.6 mpg overall. Best case is about 20mpg for mostly highway tankfulls. Worst case is about 15mpg for mixed city/highway tankfulls.
While I believe that my mpg is rather par for the course for a 4WD first generation Pilot, I have come to accept and respect posts at both ends of the spectrum - the people who are suffering around 10mpg and the people who are enjoying around 25mpg. We are all driving the same machine (except that 2007/2008 models are engineered to rev higher than earlier models). The great variances between those who get the worst mpg and those who get the best mpg can be explained by many variables. I'll mention some variables I can think of, but probably no such list would be complete.
1. city driving vs. highway driving
2. speed on highway
3. in stop and go, how fast or slow you accelerate to come up to speed
4. hilly or flat area
5. tires and tire pressure
6. # of passengers
7. cargo
8. use of A/C
9. use of cruise control
10. attention to required maintenance
Although I am averaging 17.6 mpg in my Pilot using it the way I do, I believe I could be in the 10mpg range if I did nothing but drive in NYC, and I believe I could be in the 25mpg range if I did nothing but drive on the highway at a low speed. Put another way, if I got in my Pilot and followed the 10mpg posters and the 25mpg posters for an entire tankfull, each of us with about the same passenger/cargo weight, I expect that my results would be very similar to theirs.
2008 2WD SE
Low of 16, high of 22...right on target.
My Formula 1 inspired wife's habits tend to drop the mileage to the high teens. Our 1st road trip recently showed the 22 on two tanks, averaging 75-85 on the road
We had 2 adults, 2 children, full luggage and drove between 72 and 75. AC was on 100%. The avg mpg was 21.5. A high of 23.7 and low of 19.0. The same trip last year we got 22.0.
498 miles on one tank, took 18.38 gallons, 27.095 MPG. Best prior at 75 cruse was 24.619, A/C probably 90 % of the time.
I have been developing a "light right foot" with the aid of the green ECO light, and have been getting 18 to just above 19 on all in town short trip tanks.
Morale of this story: the ECO light helps train your foot - relaxing the pedal when going thru the gears in town gets the light on pretty quickly as the tranny gets into 5th. The engine has plenty of torque and pulls just fine in the higher gears at low speeds - lifting off slightly will get it to upshift earlier and into the ECO zone.
Love Honda engines !
Isn't it amazing, the increase in mileage just dropping the speed from 75 down to 70 !
When your "Personal" speedometer gets used to the lower speed you may want to try dropping down to 65 and see if that will help you pick up another couple of MPG.
I recon you have the 3/4/6 cylinder technology. And it takes less energy to "Push" the Pilot through the air at 65 than 70. So 65 may activate the ECO light even more.
At 70 my '03 AWD Pilot is more in the 23 mpg range, and at 65 it moves up to the 26 MPG range. You are getting 3-4 mpg better at 70 than I am. If you can do that at 65, Your 07 may very well be capable of moving into the 28-29 mpg range.
Kip (OLD GUY ALSO)
VCM TECH DESCRIPTION
I wonder - do the 3/4/6 VCM engines indicate whether they are in the 3 or 4 cylinder mode ? - they should !
I'm sure 65 might give a better than linear increase - but that gets you into "single-finger-wave" territory. I'll spend some more time at 70 before I push my patience - I'm just getting used to dropping from my usual 85 in my '91 Legend Coupe on long trips to 70, but I do notice that on my typical 350 to 500 mile interstate day, the total trip time is not much longer - probably because I don't need to stop for gas.
Took a near 100 mile trip yesterday. Most of it on X-way. First part was on circle around Atlanta (I-285), sometimes confused with the Atlanta International speedway. But for some reason traffic was much slower than usual and I got an urge to run the posted limit of 55. Stayed in the RH lane along with a lot of other cars. Seemed kind of slow at first, but after a while it was no problem at all. Probably because I had a lot of "Company".
After about 10 miles of that I got onto I-20. Cruise was already set to 55 so I tried that for a while. Seemed a bit slow for condition so increased speed to 60. At 60 I was being passed by most cars and some trucks, although I actually passed a few. :shades:
Increased speed to 65 and was pretty much running with the pack in the 2 RH lanes. Seems that folks might be slowing down a bit.
As far as the "1 Finger" wavers go...! If the fact that I'm in the RH lane doing at or close to the posted limit bothers them, they have other issues they need to deal with. On the road, they can use one of the other lanes.
Have you ever noticed that you can slowly overtake a car, and as you change lanes to go around them, they speed up ? :confuse:
Kip
Indianapolis to Cincy Through Kentucky on a very windy day - 18-19 MPG average @ roughly 70mph in the midwest.
Eastern Tennessee and Western NC up and down the mountains on I-40 and I-26 - drag racing the 18 wheelers so my family did not get killed - 13 MPG. ( And yes that is an accurate # - I saved all the receipts and gallons used and all of that stuff. I was driving with a LEAD foot for sure ). :P In spite of the MPG I was very happy with the performance thru the mountains in the Somkey Mtn Rain showers.
Alas we reached the low country of South Carolina with its awesome food and 45 mph speed limits down Hwy 501 to the beach.... 22 MPG @ 50 MPH all the way in to the beach bumper to bumper. :shades:
Also I put on a set of Goodyear Fortera tires during the winter of 2007. Very nice tires and makes the car feel and drive much more stable in all conditions - but I am sure I am losing at least 1 MPG to the tires because they in fact do stick to the road. The Goodyear Integrity tires that came on it from Honda were a disappointment to say it nicely.
All in all I love this car and I am leasing it now - but I may buy it off of the lease in spite of gas prices because I have a short commute to work. It is a great vehicle for kid hauling, dog hauling, house projects, etc...
Hope that helps....
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I recently got a Scangauge as a present and have been trying to get it calibrated correctly. Then I will be able to post better measures than the typical fill up, document mileage, drive, fill up, document mileage, and repeat. Although that is a good measure, it is by no means perfect.
I was afraid at first from the high shift points as well. I have found that "dealing" with it and lightening my foot before shifting has helped. I don't like to have to deal with a new car feature, but I've gotten used to it. I do love the vehicle and it is serving us well. Good luck everyone!