Driving with no battery on HV with 2 bars on the gas gauge toward the gas station 30 miles away near work. Then it dropped to 1 bar. But with 54 mpg, no sweat. After only 16 miles the 1 bar started Blinking. What?? And Distance to Gas displayed 10 miles. After the 10 miles counted down to Zero, I was still 5 miles from the gas station. Damn. However, I got to the station. Whew !!! Yet the PIP only took 8.6 gallons. So I still had 1-1/2 gallons in the tank. Strange. Isn't the last bar AND the Blinking bar suppose to equal a gallon each?
good question, i had the same thing on my last fill up. after filling up, i think i figured i had 150 miles left from when it started blinking. i had not let it go that low on previous fill ups, so, it was my first experience with it.
While I can't speak for the PiP, that is not how my liftback works. The last bar is solid for about a half gallon, then blinking with DTE still showing some miles for the other half gallon. When DTE reaches 0, then the 'gallon' represented by the last bar is gone, though this is shown only by DTE=0, not by any change in the bar. After that, the car is running on the reserve margin that nearly all cars of all brands have as insurance against driver inattention, variable fuel consumption, sloshing fuel from hills and corners, and measurement inaccuracy. Your refill, and the apparent amount left in the tank, sounds just right for you tank size (smaller than my liftback).
has anybody tried to use XGAUGE Flv to determine how much gas is in your tank? I have that function on my ScanGaugeII but I never see any reason to go to absolute fumes. But maybe it would be a more accurate gauge of fuel in the tank. When I filled up the Flv reading was 10.4 gallons
You'd have to ask Bob Wilson, who runs fuel tanks dry for fun and sport and engineering investigations, but I suspect the last bar will keep blinking even after it runs dry. I've run only about one gallon past DTE=0, and it kept blinking the whole time. It does provide more information than the dashboard, but it suffers from considerable sloshing, so the driver must mentally average many readings. And it also quits before the tank gets down to absolute fumes. On my car, FLV reads about 1.9-2.0 when the next-to-last bar goes out, then 1.5 when the last bar start blinking. It never reads less than 0.7, even when the tank is considerably lower. Even if it did read lower, its 0.0 point doesn't match the real bottom of the tank, it is probably about a half gallon above true empty. Note that I drive a regular (non-PlugIn) Liftback. PlugIn drivers should see different numbers, so someone ought to explore this. And other Liftback drivers may see different figures if their ScanGauge is set up different than mine. It can be set only for whole gallons, and I don't remember if I rounded up to 12 or truncated down to 11.
the manual states that the bar stars blinking when there is "1.6 or less" gallons in the take. from personal experience, the number seems to be closer to 2 gallons. Case in point: bar started blinking on freeway (speed 74 mph), drove 44 miles, got 8.882 gallons into the car. at 50 mpg, I presumably used .88 gallons…8.882+0.88 ~ 9.8 gallons…still 0.8 gallons short of the full tank capacity. what really drives me nuts…Shell has a promotion going here where when you buy 10 gallons of gas, you get a free lift ticket. problem is…how the hell does one pump 10 gallons of gas into a pip??
