To St Andrews and back 31mpg

[MarkShelley]

My first decent run covering about 850 miles in total averaged 31mpg with no charges. It was a mixture of motorway and fast A roads with hardly any rapid accellerating. Not brilliant, but the most annoying thing is the tank capacity at only 45 litres, the same as my wifes one litre Suzuki Splash. This means you are looking for a garage every 300 miles.

 

[RazMan]

Considering it is a 2 ton SUV that's not too bad really - my old ML270 would struggle to get 24mpg and has similar performance. If you were using the PHEV for mostly local runs (with evening charges) then you would get double that - I am getting 78mpg on an average week.

 

[Paule23]

And it's a petrol not diesel, carrying a big lump of battery....

Compared to modern diesel SUVs it's obviously not great, but not too bad considering the weight and the fact the most benefit will be from those short journeys most of us do the majority of the time. And better than most Discos which a lot of people seem to be coming from.

 

[maby]

My first decent run covering about 850 miles in total averaged 31mpg with no charges. It was a mixture of motorway and fast A roads with hardly any rapid accellerating. Not brilliant, but the most annoying thing is the tank capacity at only 45 litres, the same as my wifes one litre Suzuki Splash. This means you are looking for a garage every 300 miles.

I would expect to do a bit better than that - I do quite a lot of relatively long motorway journeys lasting several days without changing and get around 40mpg on average.

 

[MarkShelley]

My first decent run covering about 850 miles in total averaged 31mpg with no charges. It was a mixture of motorway and fast A roads with hardly any rapid accellerating. Not brilliant, but the most annoying thing is the tank capacity at only 45 litres, the same as my wifes one litre Suzuki Splash. This means you are looking for a garage every 300 miles.

I would expect to do a bit better than that - I do quite a lot of relatively long motorway journeys lasting several days without changing and get around 40mpg on average.

Out of interest, what speed do you tend to cruise at?

 

[alan]

I've done several tests with mine on the motorway and I get 33 mpg at 70 mph using cruise control.

 

[Snowball]

Just back from a trip from Norway to Denmark and back. Total distance was 1040km an the average consumption was 0,88l/10km. Not so bad considering an outside temp of 3-5 dgC
Most of the distance is motorway, 110- 120km limit.
I used "save" mode all the way except in Copenhagen where I used battery.No charge in Denmark.
When we started the journey from home it was a h€ll of a snow weather, this caused the ACC to temporarily disconnect. When the snow became rain i Sweden the alarm was automatically reset.

 

[steve2001]

I did my first motorway trip from Leeds to Sheffield (35 miles each way) yesterday in winter conditions. Not a huge long journey, but all my other driving has been city/urban so far.

An early start - it was minus 1 degrees at 6am and the engine was running to warm up the car (gx3) as I scraped frost off the windscreen. It continued running ICE for first 5 to 8 miles and then intermittently. Heating was cranked to the max with the wife and daughter on board - no chance of turning it off! I did notice some high revs from the ICE on uphill sections which I wasn't too keen on. I was seeing 38mpg at around 70mph until I released that B2 regen seemed to be slowing me down every time I eased off the accelerator? I paddled to B0 and the MPG improved to 42 - interesting, I have not seen any comments about effect of regen levels on high speed cruising economy? I reached Sheffield with 1/3rd battery left and 48mpg (not adjusted for charging). Much better than expected! Return journey was similar, remaining battery used after 7 or 8 miles, but I still saw 41.8mpg the rest of the way.

I am pleasantly surprised having seen some much lower mpg reports on this forum. What could be causing the difference? Driving style? Use of Charge/Save buttons? Regen levels? The other thing I noticed this morning was after full charge overnight the battery range was showing 30 miles, which is the highest I've seen for me.

 

[maby]

My first decent run covering about 850 miles in total averaged 31mpg with no charges. It was a mixture of motorway and fast A roads with hardly any rapid accellerating. Not brilliant, but the most annoying thing is the tank capacity at only 45 litres, the same as my wifes one litre Suzuki Splash. This means you are looking for a garage every 300 miles.

I would expect to do a bit better than that - I do quite a lot of relatively long motorway journeys lasting several days without changing and get around 40mpg on average.

Out of interest, what speed do you tend to cruise at?

Around 65mph - always done, even before buying the Outlander

 

[Paule23]

I may have to adapt my motorway driving style for this car, without wanting to incriminate myself I usually cruise a little faster than 65 and may get nailed on fuel/battery consumption if I continue old habits.

 

[maby]

I may have to adapt my motorway driving style for this car, without wanting to incriminate myself I usually cruise a little faster than 65 and may get nailed on fuel/battery consumption if I continue old habits.

There's nothing magic about a hybrid car and it is subject to the same rules of physics as any other! Undoubtedly, they can return better fuel consumption as a result of the hybrid drive, but I've always thought that a lot of the reason for the better figures that most owners get is psychological - the car generally gives better fuel economy reporting and we've bought it with fuel economy in mind, so we do adapt our driving style. You would have got significantly better figures out of your old car if you had cruised at 65 rather than 80, but it would not have occurred to you to do so!

 

[greendwarf]

You would have got significantly better figures out of your old car if you had cruised at 65 rather than 80, but it would not have occurred to you to do so!

Many years ago I was greatly impressed with an expert talking about the difference in fuel consumption when cruising at 50mph instead of 70 and that the journey times were little different. But my god it was tedious on motorways being passed by everybody else (I was regularly driving between London & Swindon on the M4). It finally became too embarrassing (after several months) even if I was saving quite a lot of money :lol:

 

[Ozukus]

Interestingly enough my return commute today which included back roads from Langley near Slough joining the M25 at Junction 13 around to Junction 3 then down the A20 with 1 mile of back roads to home averaged 44.5mpg. Started out with 4 miles of EV range remaining.

Was very impressed with how smooth the transition was from series to parallel hybrid, didn't even notice it till I saw the dash graphics change.

 

[maby]

Interestingly enough my return commute today which included back roads from Langley near Slough joining the M25 at Junction 13 around to Junction 3 then down the A20 with 1 mile of back roads to home averaged 44.5mpg. Started out with 4 miles of EV range remaining.

Was very impressed with how smooth the transition was from series to parallel hybrid, didn't even notice it till I saw the dash graphics change.

I'm not surprised - if you have a moderate driving style, the natural fuel consumption of the car is over 40mpg. You could never plug it into the mains at all and still average 40 quite easily provided you stick to speed limits, brake early and don't burn off the lights.

 

[MarkShelley]

I may have to adapt my motorway driving style for this car, without wanting to incriminate myself I usually cruise a little faster than 65 and may get nailed on fuel/battery consumption if I continue old habits.

There's nothing magic about a hybrid car and it is subject to the same rules of physics as any other! Undoubtedly, they can return better fuel consumption as a result of the hybrid drive, but I've always thought that a lot of the reason for the better figures that most owners get is psychological - the car generally gives better fuel economy reporting and we've bought it with fuel economy in mind, so we do adapt our driving style. You would have got significantly better figures out of your old car if you had cruised at 65 rather than 80, but it would not have occurred to you to do so!

Very true. I recall a test in a bike mag where they took bikes of all sorts and capacities, 125cc to 1000cc I believe, and rode them all at the same slow speed over the same roads and there were remarkably similar consumption figures.