Low MPG on new 2012 Titanium Hatch

[kam327]

Originally Posted by Thildemar

Hello Everyone,

I have a 2 week old Focus Titanium hatchback that has me worried with a few issues, the big one being MPG ratings...

You should go on fuelly.com and look at some 2012 owners' entries to get an idea what you should expect. Some of these posters above may be giving you false hope. From my own car and looking at some fuelly users' data, I wouldn't expect any more than a 3-4 mpg improvement overall after the engine breaks in. I hope you do better than that, and if you do please come back and tell us.

Here are some sample graphs of users who started out in the low 20's and pretty much remained there after a few months and a few thousand miles. By the way, fuelly also shows that any other late model compact (Corolla, Civic, Elantra, etc.) can stay in low 20's mpgs depending on driving habits, so this isn't limited to the Focus.

[dyn085]

Are we giving false hope or are you only showing the low data? Is there nothing to support the other side? There seems (imho) to be a larger amount of people whom report an increase. There also seems to be a lot of people whom have this gripe initially, then their thread fades away within a few weeks (tanks of gas).

I'm not saying that there will be a definitive massive increase, and a lot has to do with driving habits/routes. Quite a few people are reporting mid to low 20's in straight-up city-only driving. Quite a few people are reporting high 20's/low 30's with mixed driving. Quite a few people are posting mid/high 30's and even low 40's with mostly highway driving.

I don't buy in to the '1000 mile break-in'. If that were true, we would have some seriously high-strength metals in our bores. What I do buy in to is that it takes the PCM a while to 'learn' our styles and habits. That, and our GDI engines are very touchy and respond quite drastically to small changes.

I don't go on Fuelly, what does the majority of the data represent?

[craigsfocus]

Originally Posted by dyn085

That, and our GDI engines are very touchy and respond quite drastically to small changes.

I don't go on Fuelly, what does the majority of the data represent?

I agree. Our GDI engine is pretty touchy. If its 100+F here I see a difference. The GDI seems to like the mid to low 70's temperature.

Fuelly is great to track your fuel mileage. You put the web app on your phone and you log your fuel ups. You input your current mileage on the odometer and the amount of fuel you put in the tank and the price per gallon if you wanna track the amount of money you spend on gas.

Here is my fuelly graph.



I got 25.64 MPG on my second fuel up. My last fuel up I got 28.70 MPG (That was this morning, I was excited to get my Focus back yesterday so I kinda romped on it ). You can see the days that I have spirited driving and probably some stressful traffic and conservative driving. The days I drive nice and no stressful traffic I see between 30MPG to 32 MPG. Late May is when my FSWerks Race Exhaust and my K&N Intake were installed.

[kam327]

Originally Posted by craigsfocus

Here is my fuelly graph.

Thanks for sharing. Looks like your graph supports my hypothesis.

Originally Posted by dyn085

Are we giving false hope or are you only showing the low data? Is there nothing to support the other side? There seems (imho) to be a larger amount of people whom report an increase. There also seems to be a lot of people whom have this gripe initially, then their thread fades away within a few weeks (tanks of gas).

I don't go on Fuelly, what does the majority of the data represent?

Here are two graphs I posted a few months here http://www.focusfanatics.com/forum/s...t=myth+busters that weren't too popular. I picked the 20 fuelly users with the greatest number of fillups (at the time) and cut and pasted their fillup data into Excel. I plotted all their mpg points (the faded curves in the background) and inserted a linear trend line on each (the dark lines). Most users had 30 fillups or more, so say 9,000 miles on their vehicles on average.

As you can see, the trendlines are pretty flat over 9,000 (or so) miles. Some go up a little, some go down.

[craigsfocus]

Just for the record. I have 34 Fuel ups and 10,700 miles on my car. Bought it brand new with 12 miles in May 2012. I have been running Shell 93 Octane since day one.

[dyn085]

Originally Posted by kam327

Thanks for sharing. Looks like your graph supports my hypothesis.

I would think that his graph supports mine. If his second fill-up was 25ish mpg, he is averaging (roughly, no Excel backing) at or over 30mpg. Assuming that his first tank was (as many are concerned with) lower mpg than his second, he would be seeing well over 7 mpg's gained simply by the ECU/PCM 'learning'.

Originally Posted by kam327

Here are two graphs I posted a few months here http://www.focusfanatics.com/forum/s...t=myth+busters that weren't too popular. I picked the 20 fuelly users with the greatest number of fillups (at the time) and cut and pasted their fillup data into Excel. I plotted all their mpg points (the faded curves in the background) and inserted a linear trend line on each (the dark lines). Most users had 30 fillups or more, so say 9,000 miles on their vehicles on average.

As you can see, the trendlines are pretty flat over 9,000 (or so) miles. Some go up a little, some go down.

Assuming this to be all users, this also supports what I'm saying. You aren't going to see a gain in 'engine break-in', whether that is 50 miles or 10,000 miles. My engine was broken in within the first 50 miles, given how I break my cars in. The only thing I would be concerned with, on these graphs, would be the very first 3 fill-ups or the 3 fill-ups following a master reset/battery disconnect. By the fourth tank, in my experience, I am at the mileage my car will get (not counting extreme changes in driving habits, another discussion).

[craigsfocus]

Originally Posted by dyn085

I would think that his graph supports mine. If his second fill-up was 25ish mpg, he is averaging (roughly, no Excel backing) at or over 30mpg. Assuming that his first tank was (as many are concerned with) lower mpg than his second, he would be seeing well over 7 mpg's gained simply by the ECU/PCM 'learning'.

I am averaging 30.4 MPG over the lifetime of my ownership of the car. I get better with really long drives though.

[kam327]

Originally Posted by dyn085

Assuming this to be all users, this also supports what I'm saying. You aren't going to see a gain in 'engine break-in', whether that is 50 miles or 10,000 miles. My engine was broken in within the first 50 miles, given how I break my cars in. The only thing I would be concerned with, on these graphs, would be the very first 3 fill-ups or the 3 fill-ups following a master reset/battery disconnect. By the fourth tank, in my experience, I am at the mileage my car will get (not counting extreme changes in driving habits, another discussion).

We're talking about 2 different things then; I was always referring to the myth of long term mileage increase due to slow and steady break in. In your statement "it takes the PCM a while to 'learn' our styles and habits" I took "a while" to mean many months and thousands of miles. Like the 3rd poster on this thread who said "At about 1,500 miles I started seeing a steady, noticable increase in MPGs." I did the non-scientific analysis to look into long-term break in which many on this forum believe in, in other words a steady increase in mileage over the first 5,000 to 10,000 miles. Doesn't seem to happen with any consistency across the board.

And that's what I meant by Craigsfocus's graph supports my theory. If you were to apply a trendline to his graph it would show a pretty flat average of 30-31 mpg over his 3 months or so of data.

Originally Posted by dyn085

I would think that his graph supports mine. If his second fill-up was 25ish mpg, he is averaging (roughly, no Excel backing) at or over 30mpg. Assuming that his first tank was (as many are concerned with) lower mpg than his second, he would be seeing well over 7 mpg's gained simply by the ECU/PCM 'learning'.

I see what you're saying now, but everyone should just throw out and ignore their first tank's mileage. Most dealers "fill up" a tank for delivery but who knows how full they filled it, and if they drove it around some after filling it up. You'd have no way to know and it would throw off your first tank mpg calculation, and probably your 2nd tank's as well.

[dyn085]

Originally Posted by kam327

We're talking about 2 different things then; I was always referring to the myth of long term mileage increase due to slow and steady break in. In your statement "it takes the PCM a while to 'learn' our styles and habits" I took "a while" to mean many months and thousands of miles. Like the 3rd poster on this thread who said "At about 1,500 miles I started seeing a steady, noticable increase in MPGs." I did the non-scientific analysis to look into long-term break in which many on this forum believe in, in other words a steady increase in mileage over the first 5,000 to 10,000 miles. Doesn't seem to happen with any consistency across the board.

And that's what I meant by Craigsfocus's graph supports my theory. If you were to apply a trendline to his graph it would show a pretty flat average of 30-31 mpg over his 3 months or so of data.



I see what you're saying now, but everyone should just throw out and ignore their first tank's mileage. Most dealers "fill up" a tank for delivery but who knows how full they filled it, and if they drove it around some after filling it up. You'd have no way to know and it would throw off your first tank mpg calculation, and probably your 2nd tank's as well.

Yeah, I think we are saying roughly the same thing. I don't believe that mileage gets better with engine break-in. I give my vehicles a hard break-in (a different discussion/argument) and that would lead to me having my maximum mileage by 100 miles on the odo.

As for the PCM/ECU, that I can actually vouch for. I hand calc my fuel mileage out of old hyper-miling habit, and every time I've had my vehicle reset (mft, 12B37, mft, mft again) my mileage immediately drops back down to 26. The total mileage on the car has always been irrelevent to the mileage- my last reset was at about 3k miles.

Final note worth mentioning (if I haven't already, idk because I'm on my phone) is that changes in driving style will affect the next tank also. I have noticed this a few times-once on a long trip that I took, once with a tank with about 5 total hours of idling in the parking lot (non-ac hangar), and once after a day with 15+ dyno pulls. Each time, after a full tank of 'normal' driving, the car would climb back to my average fuel consumption.

[kam327]

Originally Posted by dyn085

As for the PCM/ECU, that I can actually vouch for. I hand calc my fuel mileage out of old hyper-miling habit, and every time I've had my vehicle reset (mft, 12B37, mft, mft again) my mileage immediately drops back down to 26. The total mileage on the car has always been irrelevent to the mileage- my last reset was at about 3k miles.

It's so strange that different drivers get such different results with this car. I don't have MFT but after 12B37 I've noticed no substantial change in mileage, car- or hand-calculated. Just a definite worsening of shift quality.