Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
A reporter would like to speak with you about your experience; please reach out to PR@Edmunds.com by 7/22 for details.
A reporter would like to speak with you about your experience; please reach out to PR@Edmunds.com by 7/22 for details.
Options
Comments
I have SL 6 spd. Versa. It has about 2700 miles on it so far. I drive almost exclusively in the city. I drive pretty conservatively, I am not a gasser or a racer by any stretch. My mileage per tank has been consistently hovering at 290 (w/AC). My city economy hasn't come anywhere near the advertised 30mpg. I know that the EPA rated fuel economy is highly over-optimistic.
The only time I topped 300 miles was on the descent from Flagstaff, AZ to Tucson, AZ. For those who don't know, that's a highway trip of about 250 miles, 140ish of which are downhill. The trip from Flag to Tucson took up a couple ticks over a half tank (250 miles). I spent the rest of that tank on city driving and finished with 350 miles. Conversely, the trip up to Flagstaff took over 3/4 of a tank.
I'm not too worried about the MPG of the car, if I wanted the wunderbar car I would have bought the Fit, or Prius. The more I drive the Versa the more I like, I have 11 months left on my lease and now starting to look at my next Nissan.. Looks to be either the new 08 Murano or Rouge.
You should be able to achieve at least 30 MPG under the conditions you describe, especially now that it is summer.
Take a look at www.scangauge.com. The cost of this device may be the best investment you can make and it will teach you to save gas in no time.
I should have bought that Versa SL (or FIT ) which give better accerleration as Versa S with slower accerleration did not improve mpg. Older Civics, Echos with 1.6 liters have better accerlerations and mpg.
Neverthrless, I am generally happy (interior space and features and accerlerations from 60 to 80mph on highways) with Versa S, overally speaking.
This with a daily commute of 40 miles each way, with lots of stop and go that typically takes 80 to 90 minutes, about 60% highway and 40% city, AC on about 50% of the time.
How you drive will certainly affect things as well the roads and traffic conditions you face day to day.
Always seems kind of silly when someone proclaims "the EPA sticker is lying" when there are so many variables and those numbers are estimates.
I always wonder why people in the lane parallel to mine speed up, break sharply and the repeat the game.
I, on the other side, just let the car roll and try to keep a steady speed. Even at purely city driving mileage never drops below 30 MPG.
What destroys good mileage is lots of cold starts and short distance driving.
I think part of it is driving style and conditions, but not all. If it were, then you're assuming that all Versas are identical and that's not the case. If it were, then you wouldn't have one person with transmission problems at 10,000 miles, or another person with a waterpump go out at 20,000 while another lasts 150,000 miles. Every part in every car is slightly different and you add up all of those very minor differences you can end up with a car that may have worse mpg (just like you'll have a car where the transmission will fail early).
And for those specific cars with transmission, water pump, or any other mechanical problem that appears earlier than normal, the early symptoms may be poor mpg caused by a poor running component.
Bottom line is that it's a combination of car, driver and conditions.
A high-revving engine under 2.0L gets high mileage only under ideal conditions. Add passengers, speed, hills, accessory use (a/c) and mileage, quite literally, stinks. In Europe, where these cars were designed, people drive much slower and use a/c less, if at all.
A Versa with a/c constantly blasting is reducing its potential mileage by 25 percent, if not more....
Contrary to what you say about speeds in Europe, and this is strictly my own experience, people drive way faster than here.
In Germany, on the autobahn I regularly traveled at 100 MPH or greater. No one there travels at less than 70 MPH unless there is congestion or, near major cities, speed restrictions.
The right lane speed is normally around 75 MPH, the left lane around 100 MPH, and many cars pass you at 100 to 120 MPH. You only stay in the left lane to pass and then quickly move back into the right lane.
I forgot to mention that most of these cars are offered in Europe with smaller engines, most of them with manual transmissions, optimized for premium fuel and regularly achieve better mileages.
Last May however, when I visited my sister in Offenburg, she let me drive her 328 and I had to drive (I was speed starved) at high speeds and exceeded 120 MPH a couple of times.
I drove a rental Saturn Ion in April, 2007 from Charlotte to New York City and back with around 1200 miles trip, I got 31mpg. Ion has a bigger engine with more weights, I don't feel Versa is very good with 7 litres per 100km or 33.5mpg. A lot of vehicles including local brands and oversea brands can do that now and in the past. I would say Versa is at par with Ion at best.
My Versa has now about 3300 miles, the mpg has improved from less than 26 to 28mpg recently, maybe due to less use of air conditioning recently or less traffic jam as I moved to another part of the suburban Charlotte. My drive habit is gentle and look ahead to minimize braking. My revs seldon exceed 3000rpm even in the accerleration lane to Inter-States. I normally drive in about 50% highway and 50% suburban environment.
Trips taken on different routes at different times are completely useless for comparison.
I came from Canada so I knew they don't use imperial gallons. Canadians use litres per 100km which is a far better unit with own experience. Normal Canadian knows US does not use imperial gallons and it is meaningless to exaggerate with a bigger number in a car forum that no one in the NA (or even in the world) will use any more except those car dealers try to mislead people. Perhaps, nowadays only US still uses mpg, in this case should use US gallon.
One you want to be high, the other low. Just different ways of measuring the same thing, how efficient a vehicle is.
I tend to agree comparing trips are meaningless for accurate comparison, so to take a bit further is stating mpg for a type of vehicles is also meaningless as there is no 2 cars are identical and no two cars are driven by the same person simultaneously, no two cars running at the same track at the same time.
It does provide a kind of mpg expectation in the real world.
As a corollary, is there a definitive answer on topping off vs stopping at the first shut-off? On the Escort that is only 1/2 gallon, and I have always gone for that extra, with no observable ill effects over many years.
I never ran it empty. No problem ran it another 30 miles after fuel empty lighted up. YMMV as instruments like this is usually very crude on any car. I doubt if it was calibrated b4 shipping out of factory.
I guest the toatal gas tank is about 13 gallons. My full tank runs about 350 miles.
Whoops. This is a Vera forum, isn't it? I'll shut up.
What is the max fill you recall in gallons? The tank on the '07 and '08 Versa is 13.2 gal on the spec sheet. I'm trying to learn the useful capacity, after reading warnings about topping off. The useful capacity will determine range for a given driving style and conditions. I would have assumed about 13 gal useful before reading the warnings about really filling the tank. I also want to learn if that is just silly talk or there is some basis for not topping off.
I think the 13.2 gallon is the actual overtop figure, I might be wrong.
Overtop can be very dangerous when you fill it in the cold morning and let it idle at the car park with hot temperature in the afternoon. The reason being, the gas (petroleum) is a very expansive liquid that pressure build up in the tank could explode (exaggerate a bit). But, luckily there is a charcoal canister that stores the expanded liquid temporary and eventually vaporised and goes into the engine thru the air manifold inlet.
Kind of a dumb practice.
I started the thread because I read comments indicating that the useful capacity of the Versa fuel tank might be as little as 11 gallons. I wanted to dig through that talk to the truth. How far have you driven past the low-fuel warning and how many gallons have you pumped on such occasions? What I don't want is to find myself with a car that I like except that it needs to go to the gasroom too frequently for my taste.
That makes no sense. You shouldn't be driving so close to running out of gas for an extra half gallon of gas to make a difference whether you can make it to a gas station further across town.
http://www.epa.gov/donttopoff/
http://ask.cars.com/2007/07/gas-top-off.html