I understand some of the new EPA ratings have been published. Has anyone seen the RL's?

The skinny is that most of the ratings are going to go down, but that puzzles me. I have NEVER had a car that didn't exceed the EPA ratings, so I personally think the current rating system is fine. I'm sure people who sit in L.A. rush hour traffic all the time don't get the published ratings, but they aren't doing "normal" city driving either!
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According to THIS article, the official ratings will change for 2008 models. However, the article directs us to THIS page on the government's fuel economy website, with which we can calculate the new mileage for pre-2008 models. HERE is the new mileage for the 2006 RL. I get closer to 17 combined.

HTH!

 

Wowsers. Down 2mpg on both City and Highway.

I routinely get anywhere from 18.5 - 19.5 around town, and I've gotten 28.0mpg and higher on the highway (my overall averages are closer to 26.0 or so). In either case, though, I get 1 - 2mpg better than the current ratings on a regular basis with no real effort.

In my other cars, I bust the current estimates by more ... the TL being one example. I routinely do 22.5 - 23.0 around town and average a good 27.5-28.5 on the road.

But thanks for the info!

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I tend to get better than expected both in town and on the highway. Yesterday, I made about a 550 mile trip...Shreveport, LA to Searcy, AR to East Central Mississippi. Much of the trip was through the boonies with not much traffic, and I wasn't trying for good gas mileage...but got over 27mpg on both legs of the trip...some of the interstate cruising speeds were approaching 90. I'm still running the slightly lower profile Michelin Pilot Sports (45's), so don't know if the RL is giving me absolutely the most accurate mpg figures or not, but in any case, yesterday's figures compare to what I got with OEM's.

My opinion is that the newer ratings reflect what everybody knows...the posted mpg figures have not been all that accurate for all autos...I think the older ratings were based on 60mph, for instance...who drives 60mph?

 

The new EPA estimate is right on the money for my RL. 19 is my AVG fuel economy rating as far as the MID is concerned. The highway estimate is also right on the money for me, I usually cruise at around 75mph.

 

I tend to do 2 to 4 mpg better than the EPA estimates. Hmmm..

 

Wow, you guys get great (relatively speaking) mileage.

I guess my newer car (just under 7k miles now) and my tendency to keep the rpm needle in VTEC territory have a negative effect on my mileage.

 

VTEC is an addiction all right, perhaps related in a way to our country's addiction to imported oil!?

I get 20.5 overall in big-city driving, 80-90% freeway, but as you know, every hour is rush hour in L.A. so a lot of those miles are crawling along at 10 mph. Have gotten high 20s on a road trip. Now at 3800 miles on the clock, no difference pre/post break-in.

My 2004 TL 5AT got 24 mpg average.

 

Hey, Bob, is Ohio adding ethanol to their gas? I know some states are doing that (E-85 in most), and that may be part of you mileage issue.

There is a lot of hype out there, but independent (as in non-politically-driven) tests have shown time and time again that even 10 or 15% ethanol lowers mileage by as much as 15%. That's of course because ethanol has a lower BTU output. I read one test that said that pure ethanol would actually produce more horsepower than 87 octane unleaded, but its volumetric efficiency is so much lower that it would have to cost less than 50% as much as gasoline to be economically comparable. That's because "pure" ethanol has to be burned at about twice the rate as gasoline to produce that power.

Article HERE
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In smoggy Northeast Ohio, we use reformulated gas with a small amount of ethanol from November to April, and that lowers the gas mileage significantly. Sucks to live someplace with four seasons that has air emissions problems, but if my kid doesn't get asthma as a result of the efforts, I'll roll with it.

Most gas stations here DON'T use E-85 and in fact, it's not safe for the RL's engine to use E-85 IIRC from the owner's manual. Will have to look it up to be 100% certain.

 

Sorry, my bad. I didn't really mean E-85 - I meant the formulations that have 10-15% ethanol. (Thank you for not humiliating me - I was frightened by Al Gore as a small child and haven't gotten over it. )
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As usual, neuronbob is correct. Page 297 of the 06 Manual

"Some gasoline today is blended with oxygenates such as ethanol or MTBE. Your vehicle is designed to operate on oxygenated gasoline containing up to 10% ethanol by volume and up to 15%MTBE by volume. Do not use gasoline containing methanol."

And of course our cars are not engineered to run on E-85, which is nominally 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. We would have to have a flexibly fueled engine to use that formulation. By the way, the 10% ethanol fuel mentioned in the manual is also called, surprisingly enough, E-10.

 

I think also the local refinement requirements as well as the summer & winter refinement grades may have some impact. I notice my 'winter' avg mpg is 22 whereas 'summer' has been 24 mpg. My driving is very static, 40% city, 60% highway...oddly when the A/C is on. Still I am very pleased with my RLs relative efficiency.

 

Absolutely. Clean air requirements mandate different blends for different regions, so what you get in Southern California is not the same as you get in Northern California, much less Indiana or Florida, and then you throw in the seasons! Ack! I am surprised they keep it all straight!

 

I wouldn't use E85 if they gave it away. Milage with E85 is atrocious. Thus you spend more $$ than using straight gas. Check consumer reports E85 test a few mths back. Ethanol is and will continue to be a simple political ploy to get corn state votes. However, if we imported ethanol from Brazil, it would be much cheaper and a better alternative to oil. Brazil's ethanol is produced from sugar cane. The yield of sugar from cane, and thus ethanol is orders of magnitude better than form corn. In fact ethanol has essentially replaced gas in brazil as the primary car fuel. However, importing ethanol is essentially ruled out by import levies and corn subsidies, HOW ABOUT some real free trade for a change! I also think that Hawaii would gladly pump up sugar cane production for the same purpose.

 

My around-town mileage tends to hover about 15 MPG... that VTEC is certainly addictive.

But when I took the car on a road trip to N. Carolina, I was routinely getting 26-28 MPG on the highway.

*shrug*

 

You're spot on, except that the Brazilian ethanol won't get any better mileage than our corn ethanol ... it will just yield more from a ton of cane.

And as such it wouldn't really be a good alternative to gasoline ... first because it would still leave us dependent on a foreign country (and South America is none too stable itself), and secondly because it wouldn't be realistic to expect enough cane (or corn, for that matter) to be growable to supply our needs.

Face it - the little bit of corn production we've dedicated to ethanol production has already driven up the price of corn, and to think we could actually grow enough corn to supply the billions of barrels of ethanol we'd burn annually is ludicrous. A crop takes a minimum of 90-120 days to mature, can be grown only in sumer, and there's only so much cropland to grow it on anyway. To supply our gasoline needs, we'd have to grow corn on every square inch of arable ground in the country.

As an additive (and a pretty crummy one at that), ethanol is okay, but it's a poor substitute for gasoline.
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QUOTE=Mike_TX]You're spot on, except that the Brazilian ethanol won't get any better mileage than our corn ethanol ... it will just yield more from a ton of cane.

And as such it wouldn't really be a good alternative to gasoline ... first because it would still leave us dependent on a foreign country (and South America is none too stable itself), and secondly because it wouldn't be realistic to expect enough cane (or corn, for that matter) to be growable to supply our needs.

Face it - the little bit of corn production we've dedicated to ethanol production has already driven up the price of corn, and to think we could actually grow enough corn to supply the billions of barrels of ethanol we'd burn annually is ludicrous. A crop takes a minimum of 90-120 days to mature, can be grown only in sumer, and there's only so much cropland to grow it on anyway. To supply our gasoline needs, we'd have to grow corn on every square inch of arable ground in the country.

As an additive (and a pretty crummy one at that), ethanol is okay, but it's a poor substitute for gasoline.
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