Recourse for very poor fuel mileage
 

After taking my 2004 Mazda 3 five door in today to be looked at for very poor fuel mileage I need a little help figuring out a next step.

The car has 30,000 miles on it now and I am luck to get 200 miles on a tank of gas. Calculating fuel mileage gets me an average of 14.5 - 17 miles per gallon depending on highway or city driving. My mileage was originally not this bad and I would average 280 miles on a tank and near 30mpg or slightly over for pure highway driving and 24 for city driving.

The dealer was unable to find anything and is giving me excuses about cold weather being the cause however I have had this issue even when it was summer.

My thoughts are there certainly is something wrong for a four cylinder engine in a compact car that is driven in a conservative manor to be getting that poor of gas mileage.

So what do I do from here? I am honestly at a point where the gas mileage is making the car not worth owing as a small car. With gas mileage like this I could be driving a mid-sized SUV and doing just as well.

I live in Michigan and honestly don't know what to do besides continue to bring the car in to be checked and try to exercise the 'lemon law' on them and I don't think that will work. This is so aggravating that it very well will be my first and last Mazda I ever own.

Anyone have ideas on where to turn or what to do besides just get rid of the car?

Is it auto or manual?

When was the last time you had your oil changed?

What tire PSI are you running?

200 miles is low, I'm getting double that....

Auto, oil changed today but this has been going on since last oil change. PSI is set at 35 but I have new tires on it.

A/C or Heating on??

Heat on, no AC since it is winter.

Do they put ethanol in the fuel there, once they started putting up to 10% ethanol in the fuel here in the denver metro area i saw about a 15% decrease in my fuel economy. That is in a '02 protege with an fs though, so im not sure if the mzr handles ethanol the same way.

When i manage to find a station w/o ethanol in the fuel my gas mileage is back up to where it should be, basically the moral of the story is that winter gas sucks the big one.

Hmm, that's probably a plausible factor as well. I also saw that my fuel economy plummetted in the winter. I thought it would mainly be due to winter tires, winter conditions and A/C on defrost mode.

The auto gets terrible mileage for a lot of ppl btw, even in the 2.0L engine.

Yeah, the Honda Fit is looking better each day.

After getting it back from the dealer they didn't find anything but said they filled it up, took it for around 60 miles on the freeway, and filled it up again to see what it took and it took just over 2 gallons for an MPG of 28.1. He said that was cruise set at 72mph.

I am monitoring it on this tank and will go from there.

there might be a few factors together... winter gasoline sucks, i went down from 250 to 200 miles on a tank of gas, i drive fast, fun to drive car that's my problem with mazda 3, 17inch rimms low profile tires gives you greater speed where different cars can't, that increases your speed and fuel enonomy. i enjoy my car very much and i know because of that my fuel economy sucks but that's ok. look into your driving habbits, maybe that's the problem...