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Right now we're very close to closing a deal on a 2020 Acura RDX Advance. We've test driven the car and like it very much and think it a suitable replacement for our old car. However, one thing about our old car was that the fuel economy was seriously bad.
For 3rd gen RDX owners - what kind of fuel economy are you getting? We will be driving this car about 85% in the city, so not a lot of highway miles will be put on this thing.
2020 Advanced SH-AWD here, I'm at 21.3 or so MPG. Not the best but sure beats my 2006 4Runner. I plan to put KTuner Stage 2 on it which has actually helped with better MPG. I drive mostly freeways in California.
When I'm heavy on city driving I can barely get 18mpg with it and sometimes see 16mpg if there's heavy traffic. Fuel economy is not a skill of this car though the Advance is better than my A-Spec AWD.
My 2020 SH-AWD Advance has 15,394 miles on it. I track every fill-up. I estimate my driving is 70% highway, 30% city, and my mileage over the life of the car is 20.19mpg.
I use regular gas, and I will say that the highway miles are relatively hard miles.
Realistic numbers for the AWD:
13-15 real city that most people can get
22 combined
26-28 highway (constant 70)
It can get 28-30 at a constant 55-60 but I rarely see that.
With mostly highway, I get 2usually 4-25 combined. Right now I am getting 22 hauling my kid around for local baseball games. I only use 87 because mine does better on 87 than 91 for some reason.
I can't say much about city driving as each of us has a different idea of what city driving really is .If its constant start and stop the RDX is not going to impress you. Where I live, and travel, my city MPG is close to what the sticker says. With my mixed driving both on the highway and around town I get around 24-26 MPG. On the highway only (little to no city driving) mileage is completely controlled by my right foot and how fact I accelerate and then cruise. A heavy foot and driving over 70 MPH (especially at 80 MPH) will knock the MPG's down. Keep it at a steady 70, or better yet a little less and it can do well. Best I ever did for one tank was 32+ MPG over 200 miles of flat interstate. Mostly I see 26-28 due to living in an area that has lots of hills and fast drivers.
Oh, we drive our Honda Fit around town and it does 35 or so in the city and 42-44 on the highway if driven sensibly.
If city mileage is way up on your list of priorities, don't buy an RDX.
Or, ANY SUV. You want a different car altogether.
Agree, RDX is not a type of car which great for MPG. I never expected it to be before I bought it, so no surprises, it will pretty much give you the numbers you see on a sticker give or take.
Is a CPO +18 MDX hybrid to large or not your style? A used MDX hybrid in tech or Adv versions would be the same price or cheaper than a new 2020 RDX Adv depending on the MDX mileage. You will be giving up pano sunroof, updated seats, 3D ELS, precision cockpit, smaller size, and HUD. You will be gaining +26 city/27 hwy mpgs with 321hp/289tq, extremely smooth 7DCT, most advance tq vectoring system on the market, the rough Auto Stop/Start system is replaced with the smoother transition between pure electric to I.C.E. combo EV mode, reduced road noise levels, can run on 87 Octane, and room to grow.
The hybrid actually can get better mpgs the more stop/go city traffic you have. I can usually get in the 27-30 mpg range in 100% city driving of 35-50 mph (19.4 gal tank mean 425-500 mile city range). I get 24-26 mpgs on the hwy because the speed limit is 75-80 mph and I travel between 5200-7500 feet elevation in the southwest. Other MDX hybrid owners see +30 hwy mpgs if you bring the mph down to 70 or below.
The only downsides with the hybrid are:
- availability, few and far between new and used
- hates cold weather, very limited to no EV mode in freezing temps; but, I never got below 22 mpgs
- hybrid becomes fwd at speeds +80 mph (no tq vectoring, regen braking)
Side Note: The +18 MDXs were all upgraded with Carplay, newer high rez lower touch screen with additional functions, and updated interior wood/metal trim
There are not any extra M.I.D. service intervals compared to other sh-awd Acura's with the hybrid. The hybrid does have a N.A. 3.0L port injection engine that uses 4.5 qt of oil, second cooling system for the DC power inverter (same coolant as the engine system), larger front brakes, and the 7DCT/twin rear electric motors take the same trans fluid.
If you have some place to charge one, an electric car works great in a stop and go environment. If you can’t charge one, I would look for a hybrid that has brake regen.
Maybe look at the CR-V hybrid? 40-35-38. City, highway, combined. 40 in the city is better than 15-18.
Stay off the turbo and you will do just fine. I live in the town of 4000 in Central Wisconsin and nobody's in a big hurry and nobody's pushing your ass. I get real close to 30 mpg running the county roads at 60 miles an hour and it's not hard to get around 26 around town once the engine is warmed up. Here is my last 5180 miles in my awd tech. And a chunk of that is winter driving and warm ups in the garage.... yep that's an overall average of 25.9 MPG and I have checked it at the pump its very accurate. And I have zero problems with fuel dilution in the oil.
Between 23 and 24 MPG consistently with our 2020 RDX AWD Advance package. It's my wife's car and she's not hard on it. Plus we live in the country and don't do an awful lot of city driving. I'm pretty happy with the MPG. We went from an Equinox with a 2.4 L and slightly better mileage, but a complete DOG when it came to any kind of performance and acceleration. Having the RDX with the way more powerful engine and acceleration is so dang nice. I'll sacrifice a little gas mileage for the power of this car any day of the week.
Just drove my 2020 RDX Aspec from the dealership today 95%+ highway with maybe 10% in heavy bumper to bumper traffic. Slight upward slope in elevation with hills probably caused the +0.2 delta from the 9.1L/100KM (25.8 MPG) stated highway fuel economy. If the road is flat or even slightly downward sloping I saw it go to 8.8L/100KM (26.7 MPG)
I like how you can set it to have both the "A" and "B" trip computers - I have one set to reset upon ignition, and the other upon refueling.
I just came home from a road trip that involved about 1000 miles of total driving in my RDX, which only had 800 km on it when I left home. The car was fully loaded with at least 600 lbs of people and stuff and the AC was on the whole time. My RDX is a 2020 Platinum Elite (the Canadian Advanced) and has custom 20" wheels and high performance A/S tires in the same size as the A-Spec's wheel package.
I live in Toronto, and I drove to a cottage area in Quebec about an hour north of Ottawa. There is a great route from Toronto to Ottawa that is 70km shorter than taking the usual highways, but the speed limit is 80km/h instead of 100. The difference for a 4 hour drive is usually less than 10 minutes. And then I was the mountains in Quebec, doing some awesome 80-90km/h endless winding hilly roads...
Getting there, average speed 95 km/h (59 mph) but with almost an hour of total idling (coolers in the car) = 9 l/100km, or 26.1 US mpg.
Driving around the mountains in Quebec, often in Sport mode almost by necessity, 10.1 l/100km, 23.2 US mpg.
On the way back, trying my best to be conservative, and this time with less than 30 mins of idling, 8.7 l/100km = 27 US mpg
I'm convinced that I could break 30 US MPG if I was alone and I tried, and probably even better if it wasn't summer.
Here is my most recent tank. I reset it at every fillup. Mostly highway 70-75 MPH, and YES, at 102 F, with the A/C on. Which works great, by the way! OH! Mine is a 2019 Advance FWD. I didn't realize this was an exclusive 2020 thread! ;-)
JB, you always get good mileage on that car.....Oddly when I was out in Norther New Mexico last year I got over 30MPG in my '19 Advanced AWD but when I came home to Kentucky it dropped down a couple of MPG. Must be something in the air out West!
Finally got to stretch the Aspec legs of a 4 hour ride to the cabin.
As expected I got terrible highway miles with 21mpg. My average speed was 80mph.
People who are getting advertise mileage drive like grannies on the right slow lane is my conclusion.
Well I usually run about 5 over posted, and often not in the left lane, because I would get run over. I am ticket adverse. It is much more relaxing driving not having to have a look out for law enforcement all the time. I am not a granny, nor drive like one. AND I use only regular Unleaded in my FWD Advance..
Had a flat tire 300 miles from home, drove home on that dopey little wheelbarrow spare tire. Tire is marked 50 mph max, I went way out on a limb and drove 55. 311 miles, 33.3 mpg. I don't think it will do much better than this. Clear day, flat terrain, no wind (rare day in Montana). Usual highway mileage is 23-28, depending on wind, speed, and terrain. Around town maybe 18-19. 2019 Advance SH-AWD.
Thanks to those who posted evidence of 28-33 MPG highway mileage. After reading around, I was beginning to think that the EPA highway ratings were hogwash, which would have been concerning because usually you can easily beat EPA highway ratings. Seems a lot of other RDX drivers must let loose passing the slow-pokes on the highway.
Face it ...if you want a vehicle in this size class and MPG is your priority buy something else! I had a 2017 CR-V AWD Touring (1.5l Turbo with a CVT) and it would get very good MPG. Hitting over 30MPG was a snap. Up in the flat lands on those 65 MPH roads it would easily hit 32 or 33. Down here in hill country where I live it might drop to 28 if I was speeding around in a hurry on the Interstate. BUT, I wanted that big ump upgrade to the 2.0 engine with lots more ponies under the hood. Face it, you don't get more HP so you can dog it around! You like to hear and feel the rush of that thing when you open it up. We all do, else we would have brought something more optimized for MPG rather than performance.
It appears that, on overall average, my RDX gets about 1.5 to 2.0 MPG less than the CR-V did. I can live with that. I have more power and more performance. I don't drive like an old lady, I keep up with traffic for the most part and I like to scoot out into traffic when merging on the super slab. So I pretty consistently get 26-28 on the highway, over 30 up in the corn field flat lands north of here. Or, I can lead foot it and drop down to 24.5 MPG but I have to work at it to drop that low.
I did the numbers once and figured out the cost of gasoline over a year's time on the CR-V compared to the RDX. Using my average driving distance per year (15,000) and figuring gas at current average prices I found that the cost of gas to drive the RDX was well less than $200 a year more. Now, we all have different driving habits and go different distances bu in my case I think it is well worth this small difference to drive the RDX which is a much higher performance vehicle than the CR-V. I will add that I seldom drive the RDX in the "city" as we run around town in our little Fit which easily tops 33 MPG in the city and well over 40 MPG highway. Besides, the Fit is small and very easy to park and you don't worry so much about shopping cart dings at the grocery store.
Face it ...if you want a vehicle in this size class and MPG is your priority buy something else!
That’s a false dichotomy. I totally get that the RDX is more drivers oriented and I love that, but current technology is good enough to have both performance and a little efficiency. No one here is expecting 40mpg. But it’s very easy to stay in the mid-20’s combined driving with competitor crossovers that are similarly zippy.
That’s a false dichotomy. I totally get that the RDX is more drivers oriented and I love that, but current technology is good enough to have both performance and a little efficiency. No one here is expecting 40mpg. But it’s very easy to stay in the mid-20’s combined driving with competitor crossovers that are similarly zippy.
My lifetime average on over ~22,000 miles on my '19 is ~26.5 mpg calculated. Even mix suburban highway. This past weekend we needed to "get out of town" and cool off a bit...so we took a drive to a lake about 2 hours ~95 miles south of us (almost to the International border!) Starting elevation ~2,800 ft, destination elevation, ~5,200. Half highway at ~75 mph, the rest rural 2 lane roads at ~ 55mph. A/C on the whole time. Average for this trip, 32.5 mpg (from dash readout). I drove very aggressively on the twisty 2 laners. I cannot complain.
I am currently averaging 22.1 mpg with my '20 A-Spec/SH-AWD. I drive around 40% on the highway and 60% in the city. City driving is mostly stop and go traffic since I live in SoCal. This is also with the AC on since we can't catch a break with all the heatwaves here.
07-23-2020 | 12:35 PM
