Quote:
Originally Posted by Marianne
This is reassuring to read because we are well below the 41 MPG Nissan advertisies the Altima hybrid to offer in city driving. our MPG meter says we are getting 36.4 MPG average, which I'm acutally pretty happy with given that we really like the car... but I'd love to see the numbers go up.
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Actually the current EPA numbers for all cars is optimistic and do not
reflect the real average fuel economy. This is even more so for hybrids whose real average FE numbers are almost 10-20% lower than the EPA
combined FE for 2007.
Example (all hybrid models):
CAR EPA Combined AVG Actual AVG (Greenhybrid)
----- -------------------- -----------------
Prius 55 47
Camry 39 37
Civic 50 46
Highlander-4WD 29 25
So the EPA is changing its FE calculation method for 2008 to
make the numbers more realistic.
For 2008 the combined EPA numbers are as follows:
Prius - 46
Camry - 34
Civic - 42
Highlander 4WD - 26
Altima - 34
Hence the fuel economy you are getting is very near the real average
for normal driving. This does not mean that the current EPA numbers
are not achieveable but it will require very careful driving and adhereing
to many hypermiling strategies consistently.
