So I just finished a 2500-mile trip in the TL....thoughts....
08-01-2008, 12:09 PM
#1
Keep Right Except to Pass
Thread Starter
So I just finished a 2500-mile trip in the TL....thoughts....
I've had my TL since August 2004 and for the past two weeks I've been on vacation in Nova Scotia. I've taken the TL to Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, in 2006, but this trip was different because I didn't drive to a particular place and then stay there for the duration. Instead we would drive somewhere, stay for a night or two (three maximum), then move on. So this was my first true "driving vacation" in the TL. It hit 48,000 miles on Wednesday and I'm now at around 48,700 (we took the Cat Ferry between Portland and Yarmouth in both directions, which shaved off a substantial amount of driving through Maine and New Brunswick). I have the 6MT with Navi.
Statistics:
2,571.5 miles driven (does not count the Cat Ferry distance since I wasn't driving)
92.384 gallons of gas used (litres converted using the Navi calculator, rounded to three decimal places)
27.83491 miles per gallon average; total cost of fuel $463.31 (Canadian dollars converted to US dollars by my credit-card issuer)
I used the cruise control a lot and generally obeyed the speed limits in Canada. In the US I tried to hold 65 mph as much as possible as an experiment to see what it would do for fuel economy. Didn't seem to make a huge difference compared to trips where I've averaged 70 mph. The main thing that remains astonishing after almost 50,000 miles with the TL is how much of a difference there is between city fuel economy and highway fuel economy.
The cruise control worked great, much better than in any of my prior cars, and often it's not even necessary to cut it off on hills, even in sixth gear. In prior cars I found that the cruise control would be uneven on any sort of hilly terrain and I'd wind up not using it. I also love the "cancel" button for deactivating the cruise without hitting the brakes. On a similar note, the TL doesn't require downshifting as much as the 5-speed cars I've owned over the years, and in general I can hold a lower speed in a higher gear if I'm so inclined without lugging the engine. Passing on the two-lane roads in Canada does not require nearly the forethought that it did in my prior car (a 1997 Accord) because the TL accelerates so well.
The AC is the best I have ever owned. Sometimes it's even too cold!
As I mentioned to some folks on the Navi subforum, the Navi cuts off just east of Yarmouth and doesn't work in most of Nova Scotia. When you drive off the end of the map, it will lay down breadcrumbs until you turn off the car. Those breadcrumbs are not retained in memory. When you turn on the car again, the Navi won't move past the nag screen after you hit "OK" unless you hit the button for the audio or setup screens. I generally hit "OK" and then turned off the display. I like having the voice commands available for the stereo and climate control. When you drive back into Navi coverage, if a covered area is within the applicable radius of the car icon's position, the map will come back on (even if your car is in the black area); I discovered this quite by chance on Wednesday south of Digby when I decided to see if I was back in the covered area yet.
All in all, a great car for a long road trip, but there are a few annoyances:
(1) It's really stupid that the MID display is only in miles and degrees Fahrenheit. Since it's all digital, there's no reason why there can't be a button to switch the display to metric, much as you can switch the Navi to metric. All they have to do is program in the appropriate algorithm. It's a lot nicer to have your display in sync with the highway signs and the weather forecasts. I drove a Jaguar once that had a button of this sort, so it's not like it's a novel feature.
(2) The km/h portion of the 2004 TL's speedometer is almost worthless. I love the blue color of the gauges, but the km/h portion borders on illegible. Not a huge issue since I know how the speeds correspond, but for someone who isn't as familiar with metric measurement this would be a real nuisance. I also don't understand why Honda still uses 20 km/h gradients on the speedometer (my RX-7 has 10 km/h gradients and it makes more sense, seeing as how speed limits are in multiples of 10 km/h, not 20 km/h).
(3) The glovebox could be better-shaped for holding CDs and such. As usual I threw in more music than I needed (even with some DVD-As I burned using Adobeman's software), and CDs just don't fit very well in there.
(4) While I love the Navi and while I would never buy a TL without it, sometimes it can get really annoyingly insistent on wanting you to go a particular way (i.e., "Make a U-turn if possible"), and sometimes it comes up with stupid suggestions for telling you how to do that. Yesterday on I-78 it wanted me to "take the next exit on the left" one time when there was no exit around. Turns out it wanted me to use one of those cop car turnarounds in the middle of the highway, which is NOT a good idea. Hence the reason for the nag screen, as there are surely people dumb enough to follow the voice directions without a second thought. It would be interesting to see how the newer Navi with the XM traffic thing compares to the 2004 Navi. The 2004 can't take into account things like rush hour traffic on the George Washington Bridge, so when you come down from New England it will INSIST on every possible route (I-95, the Hutchinson Parkway, the Saw Mill Parkway, and the Thruway, all in turn) to try to get you down to the George Washington Bridge. Only when I was almost to the Tappan Zee Bridge would it shut up. I suppose it's easy enough to turn off the Navi to shut it up, especially when you know the roads, but I kind of like having the distance-to-go and time-to-go display up there (recognizing it may be via a totally different route).
(5) Following on #4, sometimes some of the Navi directions just don't make sense. There is a turn near my house where it will say "Next left turn, then immediate slight right turn." It's just a left turn, but it turns out that what it means is to go left and then stay to the right of the median. It seems that the NAVTEQ people think that the median ends prior to the intersection. I've encountered the occasional bizarre instruction like that a number of times over the years, and I guess it just boils down to the driver having to pay attention.
(6) City fuel economy stinks.
Those are really the only negative comments I have about the TL after four years and almost 50,000 miles, and I think they're all generally fairly minor negatives. The first two are the most serious in my opinion.
Finally, following on a thread I started about a month ago.....the highway driving does wonders for your oil life. My MID was reading 80% when we left home on July 16 but turned to 70% very shortly into the trip. It was at 30% when we got home last night.
Statistics:
2,571.5 miles driven (does not count the Cat Ferry distance since I wasn't driving)
92.384 gallons of gas used (litres converted using the Navi calculator, rounded to three decimal places)
27.83491 miles per gallon average; total cost of fuel $463.31 (Canadian dollars converted to US dollars by my credit-card issuer)
I used the cruise control a lot and generally obeyed the speed limits in Canada. In the US I tried to hold 65 mph as much as possible as an experiment to see what it would do for fuel economy. Didn't seem to make a huge difference compared to trips where I've averaged 70 mph. The main thing that remains astonishing after almost 50,000 miles with the TL is how much of a difference there is between city fuel economy and highway fuel economy.
The cruise control worked great, much better than in any of my prior cars, and often it's not even necessary to cut it off on hills, even in sixth gear. In prior cars I found that the cruise control would be uneven on any sort of hilly terrain and I'd wind up not using it. I also love the "cancel" button for deactivating the cruise without hitting the brakes. On a similar note, the TL doesn't require downshifting as much as the 5-speed cars I've owned over the years, and in general I can hold a lower speed in a higher gear if I'm so inclined without lugging the engine. Passing on the two-lane roads in Canada does not require nearly the forethought that it did in my prior car (a 1997 Accord) because the TL accelerates so well.
The AC is the best I have ever owned. Sometimes it's even too cold!
As I mentioned to some folks on the Navi subforum, the Navi cuts off just east of Yarmouth and doesn't work in most of Nova Scotia. When you drive off the end of the map, it will lay down breadcrumbs until you turn off the car. Those breadcrumbs are not retained in memory. When you turn on the car again, the Navi won't move past the nag screen after you hit "OK" unless you hit the button for the audio or setup screens. I generally hit "OK" and then turned off the display. I like having the voice commands available for the stereo and climate control. When you drive back into Navi coverage, if a covered area is within the applicable radius of the car icon's position, the map will come back on (even if your car is in the black area); I discovered this quite by chance on Wednesday south of Digby when I decided to see if I was back in the covered area yet.
All in all, a great car for a long road trip, but there are a few annoyances:
(1) It's really stupid that the MID display is only in miles and degrees Fahrenheit. Since it's all digital, there's no reason why there can't be a button to switch the display to metric, much as you can switch the Navi to metric. All they have to do is program in the appropriate algorithm. It's a lot nicer to have your display in sync with the highway signs and the weather forecasts. I drove a Jaguar once that had a button of this sort, so it's not like it's a novel feature.
(2) The km/h portion of the 2004 TL's speedometer is almost worthless. I love the blue color of the gauges, but the km/h portion borders on illegible. Not a huge issue since I know how the speeds correspond, but for someone who isn't as familiar with metric measurement this would be a real nuisance. I also don't understand why Honda still uses 20 km/h gradients on the speedometer (my RX-7 has 10 km/h gradients and it makes more sense, seeing as how speed limits are in multiples of 10 km/h, not 20 km/h).
(3) The glovebox could be better-shaped for holding CDs and such. As usual I threw in more music than I needed (even with some DVD-As I burned using Adobeman's software), and CDs just don't fit very well in there.
(4) While I love the Navi and while I would never buy a TL without it, sometimes it can get really annoyingly insistent on wanting you to go a particular way (i.e., "Make a U-turn if possible"), and sometimes it comes up with stupid suggestions for telling you how to do that. Yesterday on I-78 it wanted me to "take the next exit on the left" one time when there was no exit around. Turns out it wanted me to use one of those cop car turnarounds in the middle of the highway, which is NOT a good idea. Hence the reason for the nag screen, as there are surely people dumb enough to follow the voice directions without a second thought. It would be interesting to see how the newer Navi with the XM traffic thing compares to the 2004 Navi. The 2004 can't take into account things like rush hour traffic on the George Washington Bridge, so when you come down from New England it will INSIST on every possible route (I-95, the Hutchinson Parkway, the Saw Mill Parkway, and the Thruway, all in turn) to try to get you down to the George Washington Bridge. Only when I was almost to the Tappan Zee Bridge would it shut up. I suppose it's easy enough to turn off the Navi to shut it up, especially when you know the roads, but I kind of like having the distance-to-go and time-to-go display up there (recognizing it may be via a totally different route).
(5) Following on #4, sometimes some of the Navi directions just don't make sense. There is a turn near my house where it will say "Next left turn, then immediate slight right turn." It's just a left turn, but it turns out that what it means is to go left and then stay to the right of the median. It seems that the NAVTEQ people think that the median ends prior to the intersection. I've encountered the occasional bizarre instruction like that a number of times over the years, and I guess it just boils down to the driver having to pay attention.
(6) City fuel economy stinks.
Those are really the only negative comments I have about the TL after four years and almost 50,000 miles, and I think they're all generally fairly minor negatives. The first two are the most serious in my opinion.
Finally, following on a thread I started about a month ago.....the highway driving does wonders for your oil life. My MID was reading 80% when we left home on July 16 but turned to 70% very shortly into the trip. It was at 30% when we got home last night.
08-01-2008, 01:06 PM
#4
Keep Right Except to Pass
Thread Starter
Originally Posted by binhsterbinh
Like many others, I too have discovered very quickly that city economy blows. It blows even when driving grandma style. Anywhere between 12-17mpg.
30.61 (averaging 58 mph, hit three traffic jams on the way north)
27.58 (averaging 37 mph)
27 per the MID (see note below) averaging 40 mph
24 per the MID (see note below) averaging 35 mph
25.77 (averaging 38 mph)
26.02 (averaging 39 mph)
19.71 (averaging 29 mph) see second note below
32.40 (averaging 60 mph)
29.79 (averaging 55 mph)
First note: The first two MID readings are because I was running low on gas in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, and there is only ONE gas station around, perhaps some 9 km north of town, and they only sell regular gas, no premium. So I splashed in $10 worth (7.032 litres) because it would be enough to get me to Sydney the next day, where I knew there was premium available. Because I splashed in such a small amount of gas I couldn't calculate accurate mileage myself.
Second note: The 19 mpg tank included a lot of time wasted turning the car on and off and then crawling forward while waiting to clear US Customs in Portland after getting off the ferry. It took a full hour to get through Customs because they were so slow and had so few lanes open.
I did set my own record for farthest driven on a tank yesterday. I went 455.0 miles from Portland to Meyerstown, PA, where I put in just over 14 gallons. Could have made it further, but I didn't know the area and after the Louisbourg experience described above I'm done fooling around with assuming I can find a gas station. Turned out to be the right decision, as we hit heavy traffic on I-81. My previous record was 430.8 miles from home to Southboro, MA, set on July 16 at the start of this trip.
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