So ok. The car shows over 61 avg mpg for me. That’s a lie I just realized. Toyota should be punished for lying. We rely on that info. It says your ODO. Is that a lie too? How do we know? Mpg is lying. So why not odo too? It says how many miles I’ve gone on my trip meter. Is that lying too? right now im at half tank. I’ve gone 310 miles so far. Mpg shows 61.x. I forget the x. So this makes sense though. At half tank. 310 miles. But hmm. I’m confused. But I know the avg mpg isn’t accurate. I got over 60 mpg it always shows. But never 600 miles on my tank. At most 525 or so from full to right when the gas light came on. Then I went 15 miles or 20 to fill up. This was about 525 miles. I prefer to fill it when gas is at the last line before the min. That gets me 440 miles or so. I don’t have the mindset tho to manually figure this out. No biggy to be that accurate. Not manually. But dang it the car should not lie.
1. If it’s similar to gen 3, multiplying the displayed mpg by 0.93 should be close. (It’s 7% optimistic) 2. speedometers tend to show slightly higher than true speed, a mostly vain attempt to get drivers to slow down. 3. odometer will VERY likely be accurate, reasonably so.
wait until you have a warranty claim after the car hits the end of warranty mileage, only to find out that toyota math is off, and you are really under the mileage. dealer will laugh at you
AFAIK the car knows (and displays) the odometer value very accurately (assuming owner sticks with stock tire sizes). It fudges high on the speedometer for various, commendable reasons, and fudges high on the mpg, for more questionable reasons. From reports here, with Gen 5 it's given up on the mpg exaggeration.
I don’t like the car lying about mpg. I only know it’s lying but not the real amount. I don’t care enough to manually figure it out. my 2013 cmax sel was good. It showed good info. My Prius is getting better mpg I’m sure. Even if it is lying to me.
In the U.S., many odometers are now biased slightly low, ever since some product liability lawyers drew class action lawsuit settlements alleging warranty fraud for defective odometers, reading too high. All four cars I've purchased this century -- 3 Toyotas and 1 Subaru -- exhibit this odometer bias, in the 0.5 - 1.5% range. My last two 20th Century cars -- a Honda and a Subaru -- were class members on such lawsuits. Neither of mine exhibited this alleged defect, at least down to the 0.2% level. But both companies settled for 2% warranty extensions. To calibrate your own odometer, try to compare its distance readings against a GPS, or against a very long stretch of highway milepost markers. But do remember that highway milepost series can exhibit survey discontinuities, especially were existing roads are re-routed by improvements. Some of these are explicitly marked (e.g. special mileposts reading XXX.yy Ahead, XXX.zz Behind), some are not. And individual mileposts can be offset from their correct positions by mounting obstacles. Watching many mileposts along a route comparing each to the odometer, can pinpoint these anomalies.
How do you determine "half tank"? The fuel gauge commonly lies, for a variety of reasons, so is not an accurate measure of gallons used. A significant portion of tank capacity is set aside as safety margin and not shown on the fuel gauge, but is still used in the EPA's fuel range estimate. Have you computed your MPG by dividing distance driven between fillups, by the fuel added, as shown on the fuel pump? This is the only reasonable way for consumers to determine MPG. Beware that fillup levels can be inconsistent, so you may need to average multiple consecutive tanks to reduce this error element. If you are treating the low fuel warning lights as the "empty" mark, note that there are several more gallons left in the tank. The Owners Manual gives an estimate for how much, my cars have had a bit more than that. One member here drove his cars to fuel starvation numerous times, for a variety of tests and engineering curiosities, and his 2010 Prius went 130-ish miles beyond the low fuel warning light. I never took Prius more than about 65 miles past that light, and still had a full gallon left, based on the refill amount. (I have since driven another brand car to intentional fuel starvation, well beyond the low fuel warnings, and found its claimed fuel tank capacity to be accurate.) If you are getting EPA MPGs, then the only way to get the full EPA fuel range is to keep going until the car runs out of fuel and quits. Most people find this to be very highly inconvenient, so leave a respectable safety margin. Because most drivers don't fully understand just how highly variable MPG is under varying conditions, and are also very poor with mental math, most car makers start flashing the low fuel warnings with plenty of margin remaining, to minimize angry customers calling to complain that their gauge showed enough fuel for a trip segment, but then ran out of gas and left them stranded on a dark and stormy night in the mountains with no cell phone service, causing a huge inconvenience. If you aren't computing MPG by dividing distance driven by gallons added when refilling, then you don't know your real MPG.
