stocker

I track my gas milage religously. I even keep a spread sheet. My P5 does 25 mpg (10.4l/100km) when doing 50/50 highway city. I have about 2500 kms on her now. All on 87 octane. I will try the premium after the first 10000 and track it. If I see any increases in MPG I will let you know.
For the record, Mazda claims 29 in the city, and 39 highway. This is complete **** as far as my car is concerned. With my driving habits I should be at around 33-34. And I use my cruise all the time on the highway.

After a fair amount of info, I will post my spreadsheet for comparisons.

Stocker.

JJB

I'm not looking to start the whole Candian Vs. U.S. MPG... but Mazda claimed

from the Mazda USA web site:
which is what the window sticker for my car said as well.

The other numbers are Canadian MPG specs....

For the sake of this discussion we all need to try to standardize on the dimensions we are comparing here... this is the only way we are going to be able to have any form of consensus about whether the 2.0L is or is not poor on fuel consumption.

Heck, I think that I am going to start posting things in km/L as that at least would be consistent.

stocker

I do mainly city with some highway, but the highway is congested so it isnt really nice and smooth driving. I get around 9.4L/100 Km, this is pretty close to what Mazda Canada was claiming. But I think they are doing the MPG calculation differently. When I convert this I get 25 MPG. But Mazda claims this is 29 MPG. So as someone quoted earlier I think mazda is playing a numbers game to make the cars look more fuel effecient than they are.
Stocker

JJB

since I had posted some number for fuel mileage on this thread before here are some more. The car now has a little over 5000 miles on it...

units are miles/US gallons = MPG. Measurement method was "record miles since last fill up, fill with gas, pump stops, record gallons in". Not highly scientfic, but it seems to work for me

309/11.7 = 26.4 MPG -- highway with mixed in city driving
170/8.1 = 21 -- all city driving. Short hops (less than 5 miles) to and from work, lot's o' traffic lights.

then my X-mas trip began...
209/8.5 = 24.6 MPG - highway, cruise set somewhere between 72 and 75 MPH
220/7.4 = 29.7 - lot's of cops, cruise set at 70
260/8.5 = 30.6 - still set to 70
238/8.7 = 27.4 - out of cop land, into TN, cruise set to ~78mph, some city driving too
274/8.7 = 31.5 - decided to stay away from tickets for the ride home, cuire set to 74MPH
311/9.3 = 33.4 - now in cop land again, 72MPH
268/9.1 = 29.5 - cruise set to 72MPH until I hit snow! then it was drving in 4th and 5th for a while.

trip is over.

all and all I think that it is getting about where it is supposed to be... when I pretty much did not touch the cruise for any strech of time it ticked close to 30MPG if not over...

my in city driving is where I am getting killed on mileage. But might be (as discussed elsewhere) because of my warming the car up for a while and short drives (which is why I warm the car up ).

Oh... cruise speed was checked with my GPS not what the spedometer says (slightly off). Tires are Blizzak LM22s and gas is 93 octane (Mobil, Shell, or BP). Considering that snows should have a slightly higher rolling resistance the highway numbers might be better in the summer... of course the cool air helps combustion, so it might be a wash.

DaleK

Thanks for that info JJB. Seems like you get pretty decent mileage for the most part.

I am seeing from some other posts (Stocker) that there is still some confusion about Imperial (Canadian) vs. US gallons.

To recant.....

1Gal US = 3.79L
1Gal Imp = 4.55L

I get pretty much dead on 10L/100km with mainly city driving and 87 octane gas. This translates to about 28mi/Gal Imperial, or about 24mi/Gal US, which almost exactly matches Mazda's US and Canadian city numbers. I understand everyone's frustration if their mileage is lower than others, but the numbers Mazda gives are certainly consistent with each other, and both JJB and I seem to be able to more or less match Mazda's numbers.

I would like to get better mileage, but I guess since this is close to what Mazda claims my car will get, I should be happy with it. Plus my P5 is the peppiest feeling of all the ones I have driven, even one that had an exhaust and a short ram intake I don't drive really hard, but I don't exactly baby it either, and I do a lot of short distance (i.e. engine is cold) driving.

What I was wondering if anyone who was planning on doing the use 87 octane for a while, then reset the ECU and use 91 or 92 octane for a while and compare mileage. I understand the science of using the octane the manufacturer recommends, but I guess my curiosity still wonders what the ECU is really set up for. Has anyone bothered to actually follow through on this comparison on their own car?

Sorry for the long post, but I have been avoiding participating in this thread for a while, so I guess I need to babble....

Dale

stocker

I realize all of this. But what irritates me is that they have two different websites with two different numbers. Mazda canada is choosing to use the Imperial measurement to make their MPG numbers look better. We up here in canada use the US Gallon. Always have always will for conversions. My motorcycle has a 17 litre tank, or 4.5 gallons (US) My car gets approximately what mazda canada specifies for L/100Km. So I am not upset over the milage. I just view this kind of numbers game as underhanded since it is well known most people do not talk in metric for tracking milage.

So guess what using the Ugandan gallon, (1 Gallon Ug = .00001L) my milage is 10000 mpg.
Maybe I should let mazda know they can further increase the milage of their cars using this well known conversion.

Stocker.
(not that I am bitter)

conton

My last 4 tanks got me an avarage of 24 MPG with 90% freeway driving. For my 5th tank I changed my oil, checked tire pressure, set the cruz @ 65 and took off from stops as slow and smooth as possible. 24 mpg again.

Bumble G

ok found something interesting about the gas milage numbers.

Found a pic on MP5online forum of a P5 manufactures window sticker that the gas milage is 25 mpg city and 31 mpg city. Now there is some print under the big "25" that says:

"results reported to EPA indicate that the majority of vehicles with thease estimates will achieve between 21 and 29 mpg in the city and between 26 and 36 mpg on the highway."

If you want go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MP5online/ and sign up as a member. Then click on photos there is a pic there called "A Window Lable"

JJB

yup... I am holding the original window sitcker for my P5 in my hand and that is what it says.

Fulminatus

I've driven it right to the E, and for a bit while it was at E. This was after my first fillup heheh.. I wanted to push the limits.

I would've went another day if my gf didn't stop bugging me! hahaha.. =P

Anyways.. I put in ~51 litres on that one I think. I'll have to check my records again, but I believe I filled about that much. The way I fill gas is to press the pump all the way till it pops. Then lightly squeeze all the way down again until it pops.
squeeze lightly (quarter to halfway down) until it pops
then round up to the nearest dime =). (Pay by Visa so I don't get about loose change, and my Gas points is on every dime... heheh)

oh and my L/100km sucks.. 11.45xxx (about 20.6mpg) is the best I've had. Mostly city driving with occassional short bridge hopping.
I've tried driving like a grandma (no offense to all the grannies out there) and like a punk, not much of a difference. I've gotten as bad as 13.2L/100km (17.9mpg) when I had a leaky tire. So it's worth the money to fix those things soon.

And yes.. I drive an auto!!! =P

Fulminatus

Whoah...

I just drove to the brink..

I was on E for the longest time (about 30 km worth).

I took it to the gas station and filled it up.

I put in 55.352L of gas.
The first pop happened at 53.xxxL
Then I did my slow squeeze until it pops again and it popped at 54.xxxL.
Normally I'd do a half squeeze until it pops again like I said in my previous, but when it got to around to the 55.3L I got scared that maybe the pump thing was insensitive so I just rounded it off to the nearest dime and stopped.

Yikes... no spillage so I know I didn't overfill it. I wonder if that pump was lying to me.
Anyways, I got REALLY crappy mpg for this one. I wonder if the pump was lying and overcharged me.


btw, my light comes on when I got about a little less than a quarter tank. But it starts droping fast when it gets down there. So I'm assuming we don't have a linear gauge. =)

specialk

I just picked up my '02 ES about 10 days ago which had a completely full tank and after 1 week of driving I needed 8.3 gallons to fill up after 243 miles. Thats 29.3 mpg which isn't bad for a mix of driving. I too am curious about this mileage thing, especially when you consider that a new 626 with the same 2.0 motor AND weighing a few hundred pounds more is actually rated at a higher mpg ( at least on the sticker) than a Protege! 32 mpg highway for the 626 and only 31 for the protege. Explain that one to me!

tradr

sorry for some of you 2.0 guys with the poor MPG..

for the past 5 tanks I've been getting around 29-30mpg..

driving 30-35% city and 65-75% highway..

last time I let the gas gauge to down to "E" (and the oh so scary gas light) it was at 352 miles, and I filled up 11.2 gallons of gas.. so lets see.. almost 31.5 mpg.

granted I do have a 1.6 so this is to be expected.

mazda definitely doesn't have good fuel economy relatively speaking though compared to cars of the class..

David
'00 Protege DX
http://323.itgo.com

GNO

I may break down and take it in to the dealership. 90% highway and have yet to get more than 25 mpg. I tried resetting the ECU last week, still no improvment.

ZoomZoomH

There's another factor in mpg that no one has mentioned, the gasoline itself. No I'm not talking about just octane grades, I'm talking about the formula variations between different brands or even different stations.

Here's my experience. I got my ES in July '00, and was getting pretty low mileages (22-24mpg in 50/50 cty/hwy) all the way through that winter and early spring. During that period I was fueling at a cheap Citgo station near me. As soon as I switched to another brand/station (a crown station) further down the road, I've been getting 25-27mpg in 50/50 city/hwy driving. For the past couple months I've been using Shell exclusively (5% rebate from using their Visa card ) and getting 25-27 under same driving condition. I only fuel with 87 btw.

Gasoline are not the same everywhere, they even differ in different seasons, so my .02 is, if you're getting ridiculously low mpg, in addition to trying different octane grade, try a different brand altogether, preferably at a different location.

Oh yeah, A/C on my ES kills mpg big time