Shopping For A Car With Good Gas Mileage
In addition to horsepower, safety features, and basic amenities, one of the most important properties to notice when evaluating a vehicle is its miles per gallon, or “mpg”. Quite simply, this is an estimate of the number of miles the car should be able to travel while burning just one gallon of gasoline. It is important to realize that a car’s estimated mpg is just that, an estimate. Actual results will depend on the operator’s ability to employ fuel efficient driving practices.
Most vehicle specification sheets list two numbers related to mpg: city and highway. In almost all cases, vehicles achieve more miles per gallon during highway driving than city driving. This can largely be attributed to the stop-and-go nature of city driving; braking and accelerating expend a lot of fuel.
An average driver puts far more miles on their vehicle through highway driving than city driving. While that may seem counterintuitive, just one road trip to Grandma’s or the beach is enough to match weeks of errands driven on city streets. With that in mind, it’s generally okay to ignore the city mpg rating and just focus on the highway rating. It is easier to compare vehicles by focusing on just one number.
As a general rule of thumb, vehicles with a highway mpg rating of 23-28 can be considered “average”. Ratings of 29-35 are quite good. Anything above 35 is excellent, but hard to come by. Owners of vehicles with highway mpg ratings below 20 can expect to spend a small fortune on fuel. Usually only high-performance sports cars and heavy-duty pick-up trucks fall into this range.
When shopping for a car, one must take a personal inventory of the importance of gas mileage. Generally speaking, there is an inverse relationship between a vehicle with a powerful engine and a vehicle with a high mpg rating. Powerful, sporty vehicles require a lot of fuel for their high-grade engines. A quick look at a list of vehicles with excellent gas mileage will yield names like the Toyota Prius, Honda Accord, Nissan Versa, and Chevy Cobalt. None of these vehicles are known for winning street races. Instead, they are mostly viewed as a good choice for those looking to take it easy on the wallet and the environment.
A shortcut to find cars with good gas mileage is to shop at dealerships which sell Japanese brands. In almost every class of car on the market, a Japanese brand ranks first on gas mileage. In America, most of the Japanese-made vehicles on the road are either Honda (Acura), Nissan (Infiniti), Toyota (Lexus), Mitsubishi or Mazda. These companies have been very aggressive in developing environmentally-friendly products. Toyota, in particular, offers a Hybrid version of most of their popular models. The most fuel efficient car on the market today is the Toyota Prius Hybrid, which has a posted highway mpg of 45 miles per gallon. Some owners have reported achieving as high as 56 miles per gallon.
As one might expect, cars are typically much more fuel efficient than trucks or SUVs. However, truck and SUV enthusiasts still have some mpg-friendly options. The Ford Ranger, Mazda B2300, and Toyota Tacoma (all two-wheel drive versions) are the most fuel efficient compact pick-up trucks. Standard-size pick-up trucks top out at 20 miles per gallon. Many trucks are tied at that mark, including the Honda Ridgeline, Mitsubishi Raider, and Dodge Dakota. The most fuel efficient SUVs are all compact in nature. They include the Ford Escape Hybrid, Mazda Tribute Hybrid, and the Mercury Mariner Hybrid. Jeep offers two non-Hybrid (and thus, more affordable) SUV options with great fuel mileage in the Compass and Patriot.
To conclude, note that Hybrid engines are very fuel efficient, but they are also a new technology and thus generally quite expensive. For example, Ford’s compact SUV, Escape, comes in a regular and Hybrid version. The regular version’s starting price is $19,000, while the Hybrid version starts at $26,500.
