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Coming home the other day.



It was still cold then so I had the A/C off. Cruising down country roads at 60 mph or so.

Afterward I did a couple of days pure city driving and my mileage dropped on the DIC to 28 or so, actual was 26.
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Full tank 26 seems more like it.

I mean you can reset your average and drive a few miles and it will say 40 mpg's until you drive further LOL.
 
I guess the EPA should have tested your car then Bob, you got a mileage freak. I have a few friends with the 3.6 none get near that. Best I ever got was 25.1 if I recall.
My '09 V6 actually got slightly better than this one. I think it's more driving style than a freak car. When I'm in town and just putting around I don't give a hang about mileage so much, but on a trip I'm doing what I can (within reason) to get the best I can. That was part of the reason I made that one trip back at 60 - to see just how much better it was at only slightly slower speeds. It went way up!

I might be making a trip to Wheeling, WV, in about a month. If so I'll do my best again and see what a couple tanks will do.

That 29.5 was gotten driving with 2 passengers and a trunk full of stuff, and doing 75-80 crossing the Appalachians all day long. I ain't complaining! :)
 
Hmmm... cruising at 75 MPH, I can get 30 MPG's no problem. If I drop down to 60 or so, I can get at least 35 MPG out of it.
 
Yeah, OK! I can reset my DIC while driving too! No way in hell you are getting 36MPG! I have mentioned this to the guys at my dealership and they were laughing!
Okay, since you're calling me out as a liar, would you care to explain what my possible motivation for doing so on an internet forum would be?

On the same note, are you calling DrivenDaily, our administrator, a liar also? Or EnvoyBu?

Just because something may be true for YOU, doesn't mean it's true for EVERYONE.
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Guys take it easy.

Sorry to say, but I do not belive all this either. Yes, if you drive really slow, and do not shift or brake you might pull out about 30 mpg a tank. You might have bursts of higher on a highway trip, maybe. Anything more I can't say I believe. The EPA rating is like 26 or 27 highway and their ratings can be high. To say you got 10 mpg over their rating for a full tank is very fishy to me. Even with the optimistic DIC numbers. If that is the case a EPA 40 mpg Cruze should get 50 mpg....
 
I apologize for the outburst but I don't appreciate being called a liar.

Remember, this wasn't on a tank. I reset my DIC at the start of the trip, cruised on 60 mph highways, and took the picture when I pulled into my driveway. Once I started driving beyond that around town, my mileage dropped to 26 for the tank calculated, 28 on the DIC.

I've always found EPA ratings to be conservative for me. I routinely pull 24 mpg out of my 21 mpg rated truck on the highway. On my old LeSabre, I got 33 when it was rated for 29. These are actual trip fillups, not DIC calculations. And, on the old EPA ratings which were supposedly too generous, but I didn't find them to be so. From what I can tell of the DIC so far, my actual for that trip was 33-34. With the new, stricter EPA measurements and my driving style I don't find that to be out of the question.

Driving style has a lot to do with it. I always drive with the DIC on instant or average fuel economy and view higher numbers as some kind of goal to achieve while I'm driving. It makes a difference.

26 may be right if you just drive, but if you're mileage conscious it's very easy to get over 30 mpg highway at speeds of 70 mph or less. Above that and the DIC starts dropping below 32 average which to me signifies the actual is dropping below 30. Those are my true findings and I can promise that I am not padding my mileage, I have absolutely no motivation for doing so.
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Something to consider: Looking at the sticker of the car, it says average drivers can expect anywhere from XX-XX MPG's. The V6 is rated at 26 MPG and I'm too lazy right now to get the sticker from outside, but I do believe it said "23-29" MPG's. It's quite possible with a light foot and a light tailwind to break 30 MPG's in the Malibu. I've done it with both the DIC calculations as well as hand calculations.
 
I am not calling anyone a liar either but I also agree something is not right. A Few of the guys I talked to at the dealership also agree!

Did you even stop and think since only a few are claiming this, that there is something wrong with your cars and it is not the vast majority of us / our cars?

Sorry if anybody took this wrong but there is absolutely something wrong / not right!

Why would GM even drop the V6 on the 2013 Models if these cars were delivering 35-36 MPG? Sorry but something is not right and I don't think it is our cars!
 
Well unfortunately, without taking you along for a two hour ride in my car I don't suppose there's anyway you will believe it, but quite honestly I don't think any of us truly care enough about the point to do that!

However, I don't know what you mean by few...it may truly only be a few of us, but without going back and digging, it seems as though three of us are saying it can achieve over 30 mpg easily, and two are saying it can't.

I have noticed with any car that some people can never achieve the EPA highway ratings, even less exceed it. Then there are those, like me, who exceed it with every car they own.

It would also be the first time I've ever heard someone say that there is something wrong with a car if it is achieving higher mileage than expected. If there is something wrong, I sure as hell don't plan on 'fixing' it. Also, you need to remember that the 36 mpg was according to the DIC, meaning the ACTUAL was closer to 33-34. And with the conditions I was driving in, I don't see how that is beyond the realm of possibility seeing as how my average always goes over 30 mpg and stays there with any sort of highway driving.

Haven't you ever heard of hypermiling? I don't do all of the procedures for hypermiling, but I do use some. Remember the LeSabre I mentioned? A friend of mine had the same car, and using full hypermiling techniques, he got 39 actual MPG out of it, and that WAS 10 over the EPA ratings of the time. The best I got was 35, but 33 was very easy to consistently get. Same as it's easy for me to consistently get over the 21 MPG EPA ratings for my truck, and it's got the gas sucking 3.42 gears over the 3.08, which were rated for exactly the same mileage for some reason. Lazy, probably.

I don't know, I really don't get why this is so hard to comprehend.
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