My 17 Taco gas mileage sucks!

2500 miles, avg 17.5, best 19mpg

 

I went from 21 average to about 18 when I put on ko2 e rated. I thought about taking them off but they look and ride great. Well worth it.

 

I agree. Aerodynamics, gearing, and rolling resistance are really at play here in addition to the truck breaking in. Some vehicles are designed more for towing and offroad, some are designed to go fast. BMW sedans and Corvettes are designed to go fast. Corvettes especially have great aerodynamics. I have a friend who gets close to 30mpg on the freeway with his. If you want an example of a modern vehicle that is unquestionably not designed to get good mileage at 80mph, look at every Jeep Wrangler ever made. They have the aerodynamics of a brick.

I don't think Tacomas are designed to get particularly good mileage at 80mph to be honest. They are designed to be able to go that fast, but mpg drops off significantly at that speed for a lot of modern vehicles. I've never driven something that didn't get better mileage at 65mph than it did at 80mph. You run out of gears, and wind resistance is exponential--at 75mph, going an extra 5 mph will take a lot more power than going an extra 5mph when you are doing 30mph.

I can get 21mpg in my 05 4.0L at 65, but it drops to 16 when I get impatient driving all the way across Nevada and go 80-90. My hybrid/tube bumper doesn't help though--I lost a mpg or two on the freeway after installing it.

 

I got 25.7mpg on my fifth fill up (2.7L) with 95% hwy at 62mph cruise setting. Lowest tank has been 22.6mpg so far. 22.6mpg was 65-85 mph hwy, no cruise ... hauled two beds full of firewood (total of 30 miles) 70%/30% - hwy/city.

Last week, I tried to see if I could repeat the 25.7mpg for the first 1/4 tank .. and got the same 165miles before I was dead over the 3/4 tank line.

Most of my hwy driving is on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (main drag from NJ to Mid County, as well as NE Ext up to Quakertown). It is fairly hilly, but the grades are no more than 3%; I never have to come out of 5th gear if traffic is decent.

I've been working on this chart, which I'll be proving it out over time. So far every fill up has validated this information pretty closely.

It'll be nice to have a baseline for when I swap wheels and add a Leer cap.

 

Everyone seems to be giving their experience so here's mine...

Averaged 17-18ish on my first trip home with it (~100 miles) averaging 60-70mph for most of the trip. Drove it around town for the next 500 miles or so and averaged 17-18ish. I have a 30 mile round trip commute that is mostly 50-70mph. Then I went on a 400 mile round trip that took me down a bunch of back roads and through some twisty mountains/hills. Averaged 21-22 to and from. Was pretty happy with that. I was up to about 1000 miles at that point and now I have almost 2000. Over the past 1000 miles I've just been commuting and rolling around town. Averaging 18.5 pretty consistently but can easily get up over 20 while cruising in 6th from 50-75. Quickly tapers off according to the live gauge once you get into the 80s.

 

I would have to call bs on the hemi getting better mpgs. 2 guys at work drive Dodge 4x4 Hemis and they complain about fuel economy, 13 to 15 is what they get, another guy at work was getting 21 with his 4x4 GMC 4 door until he figured it manually and quit using the computer, he gets 17 highway and 15 around town. My Taco ORDC 4x4 started out averaging 17 to 18, now with 3500 miles I'm averaging 19 to 20 mixed driving. I recently drove from St. Louis to Columbia Mo, got 22 going out, filled up with 100% gas, no ethenol, and averaged over 24 driving home.

 

I have a 3" lift with 33" and I get 17 mpg going 80-85.

 

I've had mine for about a month. I had to take a 500-mile round trip within a week of buying it, and got only about 16-17 mpg. The interstate speed limit was 75 or 80 the whole way. I normally drive five over the limit, but not this time. I actually went 3-5 under the limit to try for more than 17. I think the end was something like 16.7 mpg.

The good news is that I took another, shorter highway trip this weekend, after rolling over 2000 miles, and the trip average was 19.5. It's also been averaging about 17 mpg on my in-town commute for the past few days. Break-in time seems to make a real difference on this truck. Mine's a V6 manual, btw.

 

I tell you this . my 2016 MPG stunk till I hit about 2500 miles on my OD. Now I see I'd say about 300 miles per tank but I have a 4 cylinder

 

TRD OR 4x4, 15k mls , flat hwys, speeds between 65/70 only 19.5. I bought the truck because of the improved gas millage, very disappointing

 

The faster you go, the less mpg. Drop it down to 65 and see what you get.

 

I bet if you put a better rolling resistance tire on the truck, drop to 65mph, and drive more conservative you will see those mpg figures.

 

13.4mpg since the day I bought it. Yay....

 

Bumper, RTT, Tires will do that. Lots of extra weight. RTT alone knocks 2mpg.

 

Nah, something isn't right. My manual transmission 4x4 Offroad gets better than that. I drive on the highway between 70-80 every morning and get 20 mpg. 19 if I spend a majority of the time at 80.

Are you at high altitude or something? in the mountains? up and down hills?

 

not true, the reason being that most interstates speed limit is 65mph is because at that speed most vehicles will get their optimum fuel efficiency, try to keep your truck around 2000 rpms this is the sweet spot for getting the best mpg with a Tacoma, also check if your air filter is dirty.

 

really? dude my 2013 sr5 4 banger barely gets 24mpg on its best day, how would v6 TRDoffroad driven 70-80 mph get 24 mpgs?

 

my 2.7l gets those 25mpgs or higher numbers when I change the oil or do the 30k maintainence with new diff oil,but then drops off, lately im stuck at 23.4 mpgs, totally stock with Dunflops at 32psi

 

You should try running more than 15psi in your tires.

On a 370 mile tank a couple of weeks ago that included about 80 miles on dirt in 4-hi I got over 24mpg. Lifetime avg. for my truck is about 23mpg. A full tank of in town driving for me will yield between 23 and 23.5mpg.