h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know people who love their Hyundais, but I drove one as a rental one time, and could barely keep up with the other traffic in it.

I have a Hyundai, it's the first foreign car I've ever bought (I was a solid Ford consumer). I bought it in February of 2010 after my last Ford was totalled.

The Hyundai is this moment pushing 196,000 miles, and it has NEVER been in the shop. (Aside from routine maintenance, of course).

I LOVE my Hyundai, and will absolutely buy another. Not any time soon, though. I'm curious how far this one will go!

It's a 4-cylinder Tucson, their smallest CUV (crossover). It always goes as fast as I want it to go I think I've topped it out between 95-100 mph, not because it wouldn't do more, but because I can't afford a ticket. I've gotten it as high as 31 mpg, and even at nearly 200K it still gets 22-24 mpg consistently.

The mpg must be good !

well done for challenging the insurance company - that's outrageous.

It goes to show, though, that we can't lump everyone in one age bracket in "can't drive" "boy racers" etc.

22-24 mpg is good? I just translated it into the German way of doing it (which is "how many litres per 100 km) and that turns out to be something around 10 litres. I tend to think of that as outrageously high... But then again, at approximately 1.25 Euros per litre (i.e. roughly six dollars per gallon), you want your car to be more economical...

No, it's not *great*, but for the high mileage it's certainly not bad. SUVs and CUVs tend not to get as good of economy as passenger cars in general. Especially with hybrids now, it's not uncommon to get 40-50+ mpg. But that's on a car roughly the size of a roller skate. I need something a little bigger, and more importantly, higher off the ground (which is where I lose most of my economy).

22mpg sounds bad to me because I was getting 65mpg on car, but

A) that's british gallons which are bigger
B) it's diesel so you'd expect better
C) it was brand new.

I'll bet I don't get anything like that now.

Its all approximation

Determined to get an accurate fugue I bought a sat nave from a company that has an HQ in Southampton.

They also sell a unique device that plugs into the diagnostic plug in the car.

Accurate mpg and cost if you can be bothered to enter the price per Ltr in the sat-nav at each fill up.

I get 22 mpg about or motorway use. 31 driving like a saint. Makers official figures max 38 to 40 mpg in ideal conditions.

So where do you go from there

When I can be bothered to figure out the mpg of my car [which isn't often], I do it the old-fashioned way, adding up the number of gallons added to the tank and looking at how many miles had been driven. Mpg in the mid-30s is usual for highway trips in the Summer, but Winter driving is substantially less fuel-efficient. Cold air is said to be heavier than warm air, so the car has to work harder to make way in it.

Driving like a saint in Southampton, Bob? I guess you had a red and white scarf fluttering from the aerial?

Quite

OOps, post 20 syndrome