Last night I was running near empty on my gas take, (MID said there were 10 miles left on my tank) Range = 10 Miles. I go to the gas station and fill up my tank beyond the safety shutoff. I put $64 @ $4.52/gallon. So I put in an estimated 14.1 gallons in the tank. Right away I go to the trip computer and it says <184 miles. I knew this was wrong b/c the other day it said >400+ on the tank after I filled it up.

Ever since last night filling the tank up my Range has constantly been going up??? After doing some driving it says Range = 292 Miles. What is wrong?? I reset the my trip computer so the avg MPG. MPG, Distance and Time all say 0. I did this last night after noticing that my Range said >184.

Does anybody have any experience with this? Is something wrong with my car? I did absolutely nothing that I haven't done before. AZ please help!!!!!

 

Somebody Respond....... I'm Concerned About My Car

 

No need to be concerned. This is normal. The system is dynamic. If you reset it and then drive in bumper-to-bumper traffic, it will show a VERY short "range". Of course, that is not an ABSOLUTE.

Oh and by the way, you have about 90 interstate miles left after it hits ZERO "remaining"...or about 40 city miles (2.5 gallons). It is also not "absolute".

 

Nothing is wrong.

RANGE is just a guess based on recent MPG.

14.1 gals in is pretty much right on target when RANGE is very low (approaching 0 miles to go).

RANGE is increasing because recent MPG is better than the MPG originally used.

A few months ago I took a highway trip. My RANGE started out as something like 108 miles to go. That was based on city and/or heavy footed driving. The whole highway trip the RANGE was going up.

By the time I got where I was going (~75 miles), my RANGE was ~125 to go. Like I *actually* made gas during the trip. But really it was just the *vastly* better Highway mileage.

 

To add to what Bearcat94 said, consider it from the standpoint that there is no way the feature in question (which on my '04 TL is called "Miles to Empty") could be anything other than an estimate that takes recent driving into account. Consider that you might be sailing along on the highway only to come upon a big stop-and-roll traffic jam due to an overturned truck. Your range will suffer due to all the wasted fuel creeping along at slow speed. Same thing happens if you do a long highway trip and then exit onto local streets—your fuel economy will drop and it will recalculate the range based on that. There is no way for the car's computer to know what sort of traffic you will encounter or where you intend to drive, so there's no way to have a foolproof system that can tell you exactly how far you can go on your existing fuel.