After using my third tank of fuel, I wondered why the distance-to-empty feature is not accurate. The last tank, I drove until the distance-to-empty read 24 miles, but I only fit 25.7 gallons of gas in the tank. If the guage was accurate, I should have put closer to 14.3 gallons of gas into the tank. Has anyone else observed this occurance? What happens if I where to drive down and past zero on this gauge. Would it display negative numbers?

 

Phil,
Welcome to GreenHybrid!

You say you put 25.7 gallons in. I think that's a typo. I can tell you that the Escape's tank holds 15 gallons, and likely the "distance-to-empty" gauge not only lies (a little bit; so people don't push the car to its limits), but it can't be 100% accurate.

How much were you able to get in, again?

 

At 50 miles DTE the "low fuel" message comes on. Last time I filled mine at DTE 35 miles and fit 12.5 gal in there. It seems as if the FEH has a few gallons to spare, however just to be safe I won't take it below 20 miles.

There was some chatter on the FEH yahoo group about this. Although the claimed tank capacity is 15 gal, the useable portion is probably slightly less due to design. With that said, I know some FEH'ers have taken it down to dang near zero and can still only squeeze in 14 gal(at most).

Nate Green

 

That's likely. The Prius is supposed to be 11.9, but even with teh gas gauge fix I have trouble using even 10.

 

Yes, I meant I put in 12.7 not 25.7.

 

I have noticed the same thing. When I got to where I had "10 miles to empty" the fuel gauge showd 1/4 tank. When I got gas I only was down 9.3 Gal.

 

At 7,000 miles and many tanks of experimentation I use a rule of thumb. When it beeps Low Fuel check the odometer and drive not more than 50 miles. The estimator is all over the block and I have had fill ups of less than 12 and more than 13 at the same time it beeps. Also be aware that during the draw down of your tank the estimator may change the estimated miles to empty many times based on your driving conditions and driving habits. There may be a swing of 50 miles ot more.

Mike

 

After the discussion on the yahoo group site, I pushed my last tank further. I didn't have any real concern doing this because like many others, I'd taken my FEH to as low as 11 miles to empty (MTE) and only put in 13.5 gallons.

So I watched the trip odometer closely when it beeped with it's 50 MTE warning. At that point I had 420 miles on the odometer, so I figured I should be able to go well past 470. I decided this initially, because at 11 MTE I still had 1.5 gallons which would give me another 45+ miles at 30+mpg.

As I got closer it of course beeped at me again at 25 MTE, and then again at 10 MTE, and then again at 0 MTE, at which point my trip odometer was at 463. So my 50 mile MTE actually turned out to be reported 0 at 43 miles! I took it to 472 miles on the trip, and put in 14.004 gallons, and that includes about .2 gallons top-off. This was 9 miles past the 0 indication, and 2 miles past the original 50 MTE report.

It stayed at 0 after hitting 0, didn't go negative. Now I'm trying to decide how far I want to push my current tank, 20 miles past, 30 miles past, just to see how far I can go and how much gas the tank holds when I go that far.

Just for reference, in my '91 Explorer, on a trip going through Nevada, where there are long stretches of nothing between gas stations, late at night, my girlfriend at the time driving, me asleep in the back, I woke up and looked at the gas gauge below E and trip odometer higher than I had ever taken it, and realized that we were running on fumes and 15 miles from Sparks, Nevada. I held my breath for most of those 15 miles, glad for the downhill coast into Sparks. The Explorer's tank was reported at 19.3 gallons, and I put in 19.6.

 

Thanks Trike for doing this. I agree that you could have probably gone further. I know, under my usual driving conditions I can go about 33 miles to a gallon so I think when the MTE is at 0 I can go about another 66 miles on the odometer. That is my rule of thumb. Of course, with an empty tank we are carrying less weight.

BTW, My current tank with 70-80 degree temps here in CA is up to 35.2 after 150 miles to work. I am going to sweet talk my wife into letting me keep the car all week instead of here taking it for short drive to work for the next two days. According to my calculations, I will be able to get up to 37+ MPG on this tank by the weekend and set a reprotable record for a tank in the 2005 FEH.

 

Does the Escape use a flexible fuel bladder? Most modern cars do, and that could explain the differences in fuel needed to top off the tank from fillup to fillup.