Is my MPG right?

[RockandGrohl]

I own a 1.0 Ecoboost Zetec (2013).

From £20 (at £1.15-1.20) I get between 180-195 miles, more often around 180 miles. I drive like an absolute granny - slow to accelerate and I brake well in advance, on the motorway I drive at 60-65.

 

I bought this car to save fuel compared to my MG ZR 1.4 which did about 140-150 with the same amount of fuel. There is a saving, and though I wasn't dependent on the quoted MPG figures from Ford, I was hoping for something better than what I am getting?

 

My tyres are pumped up to the spec as outlined on the passenger inner door and I am rarely stuck in traffic. In a day I do 45.5 miles, with 35 of them motorway driving. The MPG average on the car is 49.5 and every week it goes up by .2 or .1 as I drive better than the previous owner.

 

Still, I was hoping for better. Thanks!

[Bobr]

Don't rely on the MPG shown on the dash as it is probably miles out.   The only way you are going to know the true MPG is fill up and note the mileage.   Next time you fill up note the mileage and you can the work out your exact MPG.

 

[RockandGrohl]

23 minutes ago, Bobr said:

Don't rely on the MPG shown on the dash as it is probably miles out.   The only way you are going to know the true MPG is fill up and note the mileage.   Next time you fill up note the mileage and you can the work out your exact MPG.

Hi Bobr,

 

Well I reset the trip counter every fill up and I near enough clear the tank when I get to a petrol station, so I'd say 185 miles per £20. 

 

Using MPG calculators corroborate with my own findings - I'm getting just shy of 50MPG, and this is with extremely conservative driving.

[GaryPL]

I used to get around 30-32 from mine. Almost of that driving is in London with lots of traffic lights and congestion. 50 sounds almost mouthwatering from my point of view!

Current car is around 25mpg.

[MJNewton]

There are 90 1L Ecoboost Fiestas being tracked on Fuelly at the moment and the average across all these is around 45mpg. These figures are for over 1.5 million miles of driving and so ought to be reasonably deserving of any definition of 'average' and so a useful yardstick to compare your own results against.

[Bobr]

My average is 41.8 mpg but the vast majority of my driving is in Nottingham City and, usually, short journeys with a cold engine.

[TitaniumWhite]

The highest I remember having so far is 55.6 mpg on a motorway journey. Usually it's around 49 mpg. I live in a semi-rural area so the driving, if not in the town, is on country roads that are not heavy with traffic. The car runs rings around the Clio I had previously when it comes to mpg and just about everything else, too.

[Luke4efc]

It all depends on where you drive. Any sort of city driving just kills the MPG because you're stop starting all the time.

Best getting a decent motorway journey in sticking to 70 (obviously). You should be looking at more than 45mpg, or 350 miles from a full tank on the trip computer.

[Bobr]

On motorway driving, having filled up and reset the trip computer, it shows just over 500 miles on a full tank.

[alexp999]

My dad used to get about 50 MPG from his 1.0 Fiesta on a 30 ish mile motorway commute.

[Matt Alsop]

On my 1.0 Ecoboost I'm getting 49 mpg which is mainly dual carriageway at only 65 mph. The rest of my driving is at 50 mph on main "A" roads. I'm working shifts so travelling on empty roads. If you can managed to get anywhere near 50 mpg from the 1.0 Ecoboost then in my opinion you are doing very well indeed. I'm disappointing with the fuel economy of this car/engine. Having said that.......I had a turbo diesel before (65 mpg) so this is my first petrol car for over ten years.

[RockandGrohl]

Fair play everyone, thanks for the input :)

[Blatto]

10 hours ago, Matt Alsop said:

If you can managed to get anywhere near 50 mpg from the 1.0 Ecoboost then in my opinion you are doing very well indeed

Apart from these recent colder mornings we've had here in the Uk just recently I find it hard to get under 50mpg. The cooler temps and  using the heated front and rear screen for the first few minutes of the journey has bought the average on my 30 mile round trip commute to about 48mpg but I usually get about 55mpg when the temp is over about 10 degrees C. I'm sure if I was to drive a little bit more conservatively I could get that up to 58mpg. I also have the 140bhp version of the  ecoboost engine which in theory should be a little thirstier.

Despite my age I'm not driving around like a flat capped old man, I'm doing 70 + on the motorway sections and generally keeping pace with the traffic.

On a recent run up to Birmingham which is about 100 miles of mainly motorway for me, I was getting about 52mpg but I was a bit over 70 for most of it (about 80mph on the clock) which is about 74mph according to the sat nav.

 

[MJNewton]

Is your average calculated over multiple tanks Blatto? If not then the figures aren't really representative of anything other than what you are getting for individual runs, or worse just for sections of runs.

It'd be interesting to see your figures if you have them available? 

[Zico]

My 2014 1.0 100bhp Ecoboost got me an average of ~52mpg over ~6800miles. Recorded fuel fill-ups on Fuel Log before I traded it in for my current ST3.

**Edit** My commute at the time (and still is) ~18 miles each way with a mix of 30/40/50/60 mph limits on single c/way A roads with a couple of miles each end of town driving.

**Edit** The MPG column is the figure that Fuel Log calculated and copied into an Excel worksheet. The Calc figure is as a result of the formula Miles driven / Fuel * 4.54. I can't remember where I got this from but the calculated figures are near enough to what Fuel Log reported.

Date	Miles driven	Odometer	Fuel	Volume Price	Total Cost	MPG	Calc
14/05/2014		1835	39.00	1.289	£50.27
30/05/2014	473	2308	40.34	1.289	£52.00	53.30	53.23
05/06/2014	136	2444	12.42	1.289	£16.01		49.71
16/06/2014	415	2859	38.81	1.289	£50.03	48.90	48.55
10/07/2014	482	3341	3.88	1.288	£5.00		563.99
10/07/2014	13	3354	37.80	1.299	£49.10	53.99	1.56
28/07/2014	423	3777	37.53	1.359	£51.00	51.24	51.17
20/08/2014	488	4265	38.90	1.339	£52.09	57.03	56.95
09/09/2014	437	4702	37.00	1.319	£48.80	53.69	53.62
29/09/2014	419	5121	36.26	1.379	£50.00	52.53	52.46
16/10/2014	454	5575	38.70	1.309	£50.66	53.33	53.26
12/11/2014	442	6017	38.61	1.269	£49.00	52.04	51.97
30/12/2014	441	6458	39.00	1.239	£48.32	51.41	51.34
24/12/2014	432	6890	39.88	1.179	£47.02	49.25	49.18
21/01/2015	435	7325	39.00	1.109	£43.25	50.71	50.64
18/02/2015	463	7788	40.30	1.129	£45.50	52.23	52.16
09/03/2015	423	8211	38.30	1.149	£44.01	50.21	50.14
31/03/2015	461	8672	18.20	1.100	£20.02		115.00
	6837	8672			£772.07
					Avg MPG	52.13
					Avg Cost	£42.89

[Bobr]

Your fuel log is a lot more accurate than mine.

[iantt]

Since 16th September I've used the fuelly app and my average is58.7mpg on my focus but is going down as cold temps are having an effect. Had a high of 64 early in sept. But my partner has bought a fiesta 1.0 in Oct and she can't get any better than 49-50mpg and that's showing on cluster so probably more like 47-48.

[Blatto]

I haven't kept fuel logs but what I did do was Brim the tank on 4 separate occasions and calculate from that and then  compared it with the dash mpg figure (resetting at each tank full).

The dash valuew was consistently about 3% over optimistic on the real calculated mpg

Since then I have just used to dash value and taken off the 3% to get my mpg figures. I have recently checked it again and it's still showing as 3% difference.

My average figures are based on about 1000 miles. I reset it about every 6 weeks or so.

 

[Zico]

10 hours ago, Bobr said:

Your fuel log is a lot more accurate than mine.

It's a mini addiction .

9 hours ago, iantt said:

Since 16th September I've used the fuelly app and my average is58.7mpg on my focus but is going down as cold temps are having an effect. Had a high of 64 early in sept. But my partner has bought a fiesta 1.0 in Oct and she can't get any better than 49-50mpg and that's showing on cluster so probably more like 47-48.

I switched to using Fuelly (only via the website) and have tracked my ST mileage from the beginning: http://www.fuelly.com/car/ford/fiesta/2015/zico/355158

4 hours ago, Blatto said:

I haven't kept fuel logs but what I did do was Brim the tank on 4 separate occasions and calculate from that and then  compared it with the dash mpg figure (resetting at each tank full).

The dash valuew was consistently about 3% over optimistic on the real calculated mpg

Since then I have just used to dash value and taken off the 3% to get my mpg figures. I have recently checked it again and it's still showing as 3% difference.

My average figures are based on about 1000 miles. I reset it about every 6 weeks or so.

I reset my trip reading at each full tank and my dash MPG is currently 45.8 (dropped from 46.3 in summer) compared to the Fuelly reading of 41.4 (see above link).

[MJNewton]

13 minutes ago, Zico said:

It's a mini addiction .

Yes, it can get that way can't it. With my last car I tracked the fuel consumption religiously for 120k miles over 10 years. I must have only missed a couple of fill-ups throughout.

Quote

I switched to using Fuelly (only via the website) and have tracked my ST mileage from the beginning: http://www.fuelly.com/car/ford/fiesta/2015/zico/355158

Were you aware of Fuelly's free SMS update facility? You just add your mobile number to your config and then text it with a specially crafted message each time you fill up: <mileage> <price per litre> <litres> <optional note>. If you've got multiple cars you just prefix the text with a single letter that you attach to each car as a kind of nickname (e.g. I've set 'f' for our Fiesta, 'c' for the Coupe). You can register multiple mobile numbers too so even my wife can update it on the rare occasion that she fills her car up.

It seems to be an almost hidden feature and yet one which I find really handy. Not only does it mean you can easily update your figures as soon as you've filled up but they also text you straight back with your latest and average mpg figures each time.  

[Zico]

Didn't know about the SMS function. I normally wait to get in from work before I update the log (keep the receipts in case I log a fuel claim for work).

[MJNewton]

They don't seem to push it. Even the text format is virtually hidden away (it's described in full here). With threaded SMS conversations on all phones now you don't really need to even remember it - I just follow the same structure that I used on the previous text.

[Zico]

Reading the instructions it seems that the person who wrote it isn't really enthusiastic about it 

[MJNewton]

Ha yeah, and I'm sure most people don't even get as far as the end before thinking this sounds like too much hassle. Luckily it is much simpler in practice than how it otherwise appears when written down!