I've had my 16 tC for about two tanks of gas and haven't been able to get better than 24mpg out of a tank with mixed city and highway commuting. I'm not any more hard on it than any other car and I usually don't have a problem hitting the rated mileage on a car. I even managed to pull 22mpg city out of my 3.8L genesis coupe.

Am I missing something here? I should be able to pull a minimum of 26 mpg out of the tC2, closer to 28 with the mix of driving that I do.
Is there any way I can improve the efficiency of my car without sacrificing too much performance? I know the basics of how to accelerate/when to shift and to keep the tires properly inflated and all that jive, but I'm still having a hard time pulling more than a 24mpg average out of a tank of gas.

 

Could be your area too. In alaska all winter long i'd get 18-24mpg. Summer I would get 30mph in alaska. I moved to ohio, I get 33mpg highway at 70 all day long. I just drove down to texas, every state along the way I went from 33mpg, to 28, to 25, to 22. In texas entire time I was there, was getting literally 24-25mpg. I was worried about my car being hurt, well I returned to ohio, every state coming north, price of gas was raising, but so was the quality. Back in ohio getting close to 400miles per tank.

So idk. I know region affects my car ALOT. I am at 70k I keep my pirelli tires at 32psi all way around (nitrogen) so yeah. I run a can of seafoam every 20k miles in fuel too.

 

Dayton, Ohio and still getting 24 average.

 

I am in englewood/brookville ohio.

Put seafoam in your tank, change air filter, make tire pressure 32psi. use Shell gas.
just drive it, shift at 2800-3000rpm use 6th gear on highway, dont drone the engine, dont over rev the engine. idk.

 

I would really rather not seafoam an engine with less than a thousand miles on it but I already shift at 3k and don't drive below about 1800, 2100 if I'm going uphill. I'll try changing what gas I use. I use speedway because I drive enough that I can get a $100 gas card with my reward points about once a year.

 

Have you reset the MPG counter? When viewing mpg press and hold the stick on your speedo untill it changes to 0. I have a 2014 and my fist few tanks were only showing about 19mpg, once i reset the mpg counter i then averaged about 29mpg combined. I think the dealer may have left the car idling extended periods and that made it look worse. Our owners manuals say use 87 octane, I normally use mobil/exxon gas because its endorsed by toyota, bmw, and GM, but any major gas supplier should sufice. More importantly, i did notice a slight increase in my mpg after my first oilchange. I would give it some time for your engine to break in. One last thing is you can use a fuel system cleaner (even though its probably unneaded with your brand new ride) i use the lucas oil cleaner about once a month, or every couple tank fills.

 

Shift at 3000 ish
Keep rpms above 2300-2500. I saw a post you say 1800-2100. That's too low in my opinion. 70k miles I've figured out our cars run best at 2300-2600rpm. Efficiency for me drops below 2300 as I think it doesn't run optimally, we have 4 cylinders. Less power means it's more strain on our engines vs larger engine w more down low power.

Try it out^ keep rpms higher for a week.

Try that, with shell 87 one tank.
Never use anything but 87, more octane makes your car change its knock to burn it to compensate.

Get to 65mph, put in 6th, as reset trip mpg odometer meter for a few minutes. 3-4 mins you should be in 30s and my mpg tracker is damn accurate every tank I reset it. Let us know what it says. Hopefully you weren't too abusive on it and got a good break in for longevity.

 

We have a high-displacement, long stroke 4 cylinder. My 1.6L Honda needs to stay around 2300, but this one has enough torque to be just fine right around 2k. I filled my tank this morning and drove from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio (about 80 miles) for work and averaged 26.7mpg in 6th gear the whole way. Isn't that the city mpg rating? There was virtually no traffic, so I wasn't braking or accelerating pretty much at all. I was pretty gentle during the break-in, but I feel like I'm still missing something. Again, I could almost get this fuel economy in my genesis and it had double the power and weighed only a couple hundred pounds more. Aside from the tC being (potentially) better in snow, I really feel like I got ripped off with this one...

 

Have you reset you reset the MPG counter?

 

I live in LA and get 19.8 mpg

 

Every time I fill up the tank.

 

around Chicago i got around 30-33 highway depending on speed, now that i'm boosted i average 22-26(I love boost) or ~28-30 on cruze @ 75. If your motor is new as in less than 5k miles i wouldn't worry about it too much, i remember mine wasn't the greatest when i first picked it up but as the motor breaks in it gets better. Also don't be shy on the RPMs and throttle when its newer, it takes some abuse to get everything warn in properly. it takes a long time to break in a motor on synthetic oil.

 

It was suggested that I keep out of the gas on the highway since our cars aren't the most aerodynamic ( I usually cruise around 80mph). Eased back to 60-70mph and followed semis on an 80 mile trip and ended up getting about 38mpg. I guess there's nothing really wrong with my engine, just the aerodynamics of the car and how I drive it. Still having trouble getting better than 23-24 city though, no matter how much I try.

 

23mpg is the EPA rating for city, and 31 is EPAs highway, so you're actually doing better than the EPA ratings. Probably has to do more with your speed, when you shift, and how much weight you carry in the car (i.e. i know some people that always travel with cases of water and all types of stuff in their car an wonder why they don't get good gas mileage. Also the 2014+ tC isn't much less aerodynamic than say a civic. Our coefficient of drag is 0.325..Most cars are around 0.3-0.35. Check this out Vehicle Coefficient of Drag List - EcoModder

I attached the 2015 spec sheet, that shows our COD

 

Awesome. Thanks a ton.
I try and beat the EPA ratings since they're generally padded in the US to compensate for a commonly aggressive driving style. If you're shooting for fuel efficiency, it is entirely possible to get 10-15% above the EPA rating, so to just hit the estimated average was kind of disappointing, but I think I've got it down now. It requires a completely different driving style from any car I've owned before though.