Is this strange or normal?

So I keep an eye on my consumption on the HSI from fill up to fill up. The latest tank of fuel, my 2010 with 212k miles started the tank showing 45.1 mpg (actually first “trip” showed 86.9 mpg due to just 1.9 miles of electric only driving. But over the past three to four days, it’s slowly increased. Today it’s up to 49.9 mpg. The weather outside is warming up slightly, but the ICE seems to be running just as often. I know that things like running the heater make the ICE run more often and “kill” mpg. But it just seems strange that this tank, at 200 miles in, the average is up nearly 5 mpg. And the HSI is about 2.4% optimistic over the 1500 miles that I have owned the car.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the car and the mileage; but is the warmer(60’s instead of 40’s)temp wise doing it??

 

As the week ends, and next week begins, Southern Indiana temps will continue to rise to nearly 80. I’ll keep an eye on it and see if the increase of mpg continues. I wonder in part also if the increase is due to me adjusting to how the car performs in city driving. I feel like the past seven weeks that the car has been teaching me to be a better driver too.

 

Here in Southern Indiana they changed the last week of March at the “top tier” stations. The mom and pop stores have been changing since the middle of the month.

 

This happened on my way home this evening. And I gained three tenths on top of that during the drive. No heat, no AC. Sunroof only open.

 

Since I bought the car in March, the economy has been trending upward. 45.1, 45.9, 47.1, and 47.3 on the previous fill ups. On the next fill up, I’m going to the same mom and pop that this tank came from, just to see if it has something to do with fuel quality. But one would think that a mom and pop would be a “lower” quality fuel.

 

It’s been another tank of gasoline since I’ve posted and I thought I’d post an update. I got a bit less mpg last tank, but I found that the station that I fueled at was selling 20% ethanol in their gasoline. Most pumps in my area have the 10% disclaimer which is fine. This particular station had 20%. It triggered the CEL for lean codes, and I took it to a shop that could test the fuel composition. 21.3% is where it came up.
I have since found a station that sells 0% ethanol, but they get a premium price at $.45 more per gallon. The car loves it. Very happy and the CEL is gone.

 

It was my local Walmart gas station, actually owned by Walmart and not Murphy USA as some of them are. The local store management claimed to be innocent. Higher levels of management at the corporate level said that my claim was not possible. My car knows the difference, and if you can read the evap/purge percentage, you can test your own alcohol content of your fuel.

I will say that tank 2 of the ethanol free is netting 57 mpg on strictly in town driving. I drove it 125 miles and put 2.18 gallon of fuel in it. I can’t believe the dramatic improvement the lack of ethanol made. A nearly double digit increase on E0 gas, I would say the price premium is worth it.

 

There are three stations in my town that sell 100% ethanol free gasoline. Two are public, the other is Pacific Pride Commercial fueling. The two public ones sell the E0 at $.35 higher per gallon. I just wonder if my other vehicle would see any improvement in burning the E0 fuel. Since it only gets 14 mpg in town, it won’t take as long to burn out the contents of its tank. LoL