TheUglyOne

Okay. I bought this car and was looking to get around 25-30MPG and thought I had gotten that on the first take. Well I was terribly wrong...I forgot to factor in the 77 miles that it had when it was new and my new calculation brought it to about 20 MPG. Terrible and unacceptable in my honest opinion. That's 10 less then the posted city and 18 less than the posted highway. Now I called my dealership and they told me to call corporate. I called corporate and filed a case number and then I called the dealership back and told them I had filed a case with Toyota. The manager said he would discuss the different options I have available and see what we could do. I have been babying this car to see the max fuel efficiency that I could get out of it and to only get 21 with no AC or windows down is terrible. I am considering suing Toyota for false advertising if this doesn't come my way.


Discuss.

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Grateful11

That's pretty bad mileage especially if you are babying it as you say. I've been getting 38-40mpg on the interstate. The worst I've got was 32mpg around home while on vacation for a week. Something doesn't sound right with the car. Did you buy it new?

TheUglyOne

Yes I bought it brand new from Tustin Toyota. I have NEVER had a car receive less than 10
under sticker before in my life and I have owned 3 cars. I am thinking I got a dud

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cobb

That is just hard to believe, is it an automatic? Sounds like its not going into OD and the parking brake is dragging. Every vehicle I have driven the past year and a few months I have always gotten the sticker or more. I drove a e250 cargo van, mercedes 240d and now the xa.

Do you live anywhere in Richmond, VA and maybe I could drive it for a few days? I have gotten up to 40.58mph and that is with the windows up and ac on fan speed 3 or 4 with mixed interestate and city driving, plus I have repeated that too.

Worse so far was 35mpg and that was a few weeks ago when I was held up on a traffic jam on i295. First tank was I believe right on the sticker at 36mpg on the dot and it went up from there.

I am not sure much can be done about fuel economy vs constant mechanic problems under like a lemon law or something.

Other ideas to try.

Check tire air pressure and jack up each side to check to see if wheel rotates freely.

Check air filter, plugs and use a code scanner to check for anything on the computer.

If its an automatic, try to feel if it shifts 3 or 4 times when up to speed.

Look under the front end of the car to se if anything is loose and could be blowing out of shape in the air dam area.

Try driving with your right shoe off or jam safely and securely a tennis ball under the gas petal to limit its travel. I know its easy to press and I drove the first week with my shoe off to make sure to baby it and at that, I only press down a few inches at most. I shift at 3 grand and use the highest gear as possible.

oneslowxa

also check tire pressures and what type of gas you use... stay away from ultra cheap gass.. like hess... that stuff tends to evaporate... do you drive more highway? city? do you let the car idle for long periods of time?

kms2112

I have had my xA for a year and i average 32 mpg in the city with the ac on. The first tank was bad mpg but my math was wrong. I had not figured mpg in 10 years.

kms2112

draxcaliber

Dude...how many freakin miles do you have you on your car? You just got it new? it has to break in. my mom's Subaru got like half the projected
EPA estimates for the first thousand and some miles. same for my tC. she just got her xA a few months ago, it runs just fine.

Somebody posted a problem like this with his xB, he had a local dealership do a consumption test or something like that. why not try that.

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TheUglyOne

it's only got 500 miles on it...this includes the 77 miles which I bought it at the dealer (which they filled up my gas tank for me) then I am almost done with my second tank of gas @ 500 miles. Which is Why I think something is definitely wrong. I am taking it to the dealer and I have already filed a report with scion about my first two tanks so it is documented that I have poor MPG from the get-go. I do a good combination of highway/city speeds all time also.

SanchezHacker

draxcaliber is right, there is a break in period. I bought my xA with only 5 miles on it and was getting 22 mpg at first. i haven't checked it in a long time but the last time i did i was getting 27 mpg, i assume that it must have gone up since them. I will re-check on my next tank, but I get low mpg anyways just because I drive in constant stop and go traffic. Anyways, hope it works out for ya.

Grateful11

>stay away from ultra cheap gass.. like hess... that stuff tends to evaporate..

Oh come on. I get better mileage from gas like Petro Express than I do with Exxon, I've tried it several times just prove it to myself. I mentioned it at work one day and another guy said the same thing about his Accord.

Back to the Ugly One. What's your RPM's at 70mph?

BTW: I got excellent mileage from day one. The dealer filled up my tank and I got somewhere around 375 miles with the first one.

DeezNutz1833

Put another 1000 miles on the car and you should see better mpg. Give it sometime, the engine needs time to get broken in. Oh and BTW if you sue anyone over MPG, you will most likely lose....

andysxA

LOL at suing over mpg

pullthelever

I didn't get very good gas mileage either at first. I don't remember what it was, but it was somewhere in the 20s when I first got my car (with 9 miles on it). Now, with a couple thousand on it, I am getting around 32 with pretty much all city driving.

How you drive is very important too. If you accelerate quickly between every traffic light you are going to decrease your fuel economy. If you speed, you are going to decrease your fuel economy.

The EPA's numbers are not a guarantee, and they are generally an upper bound.

ein311

My first tank was about 30mpg. I bought the car with 200miles already on it (they had to deliver it from Gilroy so I guess they just drove it...oh well).

My first few tanks were about 30-34, but once I hit the 2000mile barrier I've been getting 36+. My second to last fillup was 40, my last fillup was 35 because I got caught up in a lot of traffic.

I drive a completely stock 2006 RS3 automatic. The only thing I've done was add a ground wire kit that mikochu posted in this forum and I removed the snorkel to my airbox (removed it at about 2800miles, I didn't notice a big leap in mileage).

No matter if I drive it hard and drive stupid or conservatively, I've never seen the car dip under 30mpg, and it's consistently at about 35...

draxcaliber makes a good point--give it more than just 1-2 tanks before you start complaining and see if it improves. Window stickers are just estimates, I use them as a general guideline but never expect them to be correct.

By the way, I drive about 98% highway...about 80 miles a day. The other 2% is when I exit the freeway and go to school or work, otherwise, I'm never in town.

draxcaliber

also, you can't get mad at toyota if you don't get the mpg estimates that the epa projects.

the epa estimates are the only numbers car manufacturers are allowed to advertise. toyota didn't do the tests, they didn't calculate the estimate. unless they didn't build your car properly, toyota is not to blame for you not getting your epa estimated mpg.

also, i remember meeting an older couple with a new xa. they told me they were getting terrible gas mileage when it was new, but after about a thousand miles or so, it was like a switch went off and it got great mpg. so calm down and just see what you get down the road.

cobb

I guess I was lucky, I got 36 even on my first tank. I buy gas at hess in the city which is part ethanol and the rural hess dealer that sells gas. Ive also bought at a few other national dealers out of convience.

The sales person was rather disappointed I wasnt hitting 40 when I returned for a free car wash. After about a thousand miles I notice the gas guage started to move a bit slower and got about 200 miles per half a tank vs 175.

The compression test is a good idea. Basically you have something causing more gas to be dumped into the engine. Either you are giving more throttle cause of friction some where or a lost of compression in the valves or rings.

TheUglyOne

So I went in and talked to the service dealer today. He said that I should try one more full tank of gas and see what I get for MPG with the next tank. If it's still lousy to bring it in and he will run it through a large series of tests to deal with the problem. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and maybe I just had an issue with my first two tanks and my engine learning my driving habits. You should see my next tank results in a couple of days if it stays the way it is now.

TheRealBen

There's actually a civil case out there about Toyota misrepresenting this. They apparantly lie about their MPG all the time.

Also, since owning my xA, and having owned 5 American cars, the xA is the only one that doesn't get the mpg that is advertized. I still get around 30 gallons combined highway/city, but when city alone is supposed to get 32, yeah, Toyota is lying.

TheUglyOne

It's called false advertising and it is against the law.

ein311

...is that lawsuit by the same people who were suing Hard Drive manufacturers because "100GB" wasn't showing up as "100GB" in Windows?

Because.... 1000bytes != 1024bytes in windows?

I still don't see how an estimate done by an outside company can be considered false advertising. There are even mileage ranges listed below the big numbers to tell the kinds of gas mileage typically received in similar cars...
Plus, the EPA has even pseudo-admitted to how flawed the tests are by revising the way they do their testing for 2008 and providing a conversion for many older cars.

In my automatic I can achieve over 35mpg without trying...with super-advanced-awesome-gas-saving-mode(tm) turned on, I have hit 40mpg. Granted, I drive over 500 miles a week and most of it is highway, but that is where the best mileage is at. There are other people here that have posted achieving 40mpg and others getting close to or are at the posted numbers.


After checking the fueleconomy.gov website and seeing the new rating for the xA, I'm falling right in the designated zone:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/calcu...umn=1&id=21777