Whats wrong with my gas mileage?

I do short drive to commuter train station weekdays, 11 mpg is what I'm getting, but I don't expect anymore. I have 12000 Km's on truck, or about 7500 miles, has never gotten any better on those short drives.

 

That's supposed to be an arrow pointing up to the quote I used.

 

Gotcha

 

Whats the fuelly app?

 

http://www.fuelly.com

 

I'm averaging about 11.5 to 12 as well. I told the dealer about it when I took it in for the 5k service today and he told me it was due to the winter grade gas. When I told him it's been like that since I bought it in September he told me that is when they start the winter gas (It's usually in the high 80's to low 90's in September around here). I also told him that the 3 co-workers that have '16 Tacomas are getting 18mg he goes I guess they are just lucky. WTF. I wanted to reach across the counter and throat punch the guy.

 

My on board mpg calc isn't too far off from reality. At most it has been 1 mpg less than actual and is normally only about .5 mpg less than actual. But I am well past my break in period too:

 

I have put almost 10K miles on my new Tacoma in 6 months. I have been pleasantly surprised by the fuel economy and have made very minor adjustments to driving habits to significantly improve my miles per gallon.
1. Keep tires at exactly 40 PSI cold. This will not cause tire wear and will actually extend the life of the tires. Regularly rotate them.
2. Only run AC when necessary.
3. Try to keep RPM below 2k.

By doing this I have averaged over 21 MPG for 9800 miles. Much of that driving is city and at 80MPH on the highways.

For the last 200 miles on a Christmas trip I averaged 26.2 MPG. I posted a photo. I did this by driving 70 MPH on Highway and the speed limit on secondary roads. For that 200 miles I did not have the AC on and used cruise control as much as possible.

I use regular 87 octane gas.

 

The truck says 29PSI when cold @60F. You're running too high on tire pressure.

 

A while back I asked someone with a scan gauge to check fuel consumption on the new 3.5L. The new engine once warmed up idles at .2 gal/hr vs the old 4.0L .35-.4 gal/hr. so idling wouldn't kill the mpg. I drive in a 2 mile radius home, work, gym and stores and average 12-13 mpg with a 3" lift on 33" tires and roughly 300 lbs of armor.

 

The tires recommend a max of 44. The door sticker says 32. I have run 40 on previous trucks with great success and no issues. Once got 121k miles on a set of Cooper Discovery on a 4wd Nissan Titan. I will lower to 38 psi and see if there is a noticeable difference in mpg, ride and performance and post the results.

 

I'm on your side, I think there is something wrong with the MPG of your truck. Considering that I got 18.5 MPG on my first tank. 22MPG there after...

Did you ever see the thread about the guy with a leaking fuel line?
I'll edit if I find the thread.

 

Weird I was getting 22 mpg driving off the dealership lot going back home 50 miles doing 65 mph. But I've heard a lot of people getting terrible mileage off the lot and slowly increasing with more miles.

 

You will see lower numbers on the tank average screen in two scenarios. First, do you idle a lot? When I first got my truck, I sat with it running quite a bit while I played around and learned about all of the features. This caused the tank average screen to show pretty low. Second, it will show low for a little while after filling the tank as it resets the computer. So if you fill up and immediately go into stop and go traffic, you will see that low mileage.

The one thing that is a concern is that you show 14.7 MPG as the best you've gotten. That does seem quite low to me. I average between 16-19 after 1 month of ownership, but I have seen 10, 11, 12 MPG averages on short trips with lots of stop and go. It very well could be that where you live is just tough on the MPG. I'd try and find other new Tacoma owners near you and ask them what they average.

I've also seen a couple of threads that talk about about gas tank leak issue that causes low MPG in the 10-13 range. Maybe browse those threads and see you notice any of the issues that people discuss on there.

 

Over-inflation is better than under-inflation but 40 cold is too high for me too. I would only go up to 35 cold at most on stock tires. When I went through the Appalachian mtns I saw a rise of 3-4 psi in the tires. If I was running 40 at the time it would have put me at the max recommended (which is not generally good).

 

FWIW... I used to warn my wife about this constantly because she drives 30 miles into the fuel light of every tankful in every car she has ever had. After 20+ years and a couple hundred thousand miles with no fuel pump failures I've decided not to mention it anymore. It's a myth.

 

Don't read into the computer. How many miles are you driving before you need to fill the tank? If you were truly getting 11 mpgs you would be filling up every 200 miles or less. Most people fill up around 350-400 but drive a lot of mixed and highway, if you are driving local and city only it will be a lot less. Your gas light come son when 3 gallons are left in the tank so you are usually only using 15-18 gallons. Your real mpgs are likely around 14-15 which is still low but to be expected if just driving city.

55-65 Anything more and you begin to push the engine into higher rpms to maintain speed.

 

Yep I've run the farm truck dry several times (broken fuel gauge) and never had to replace the pump. Just has trouble starting back up sometimes.

 

I live in the Bay Area and deal with hills, California winter gas etc. My experience after 25K miles is that idling and town stop/go driving kill the mpg more than some other vehicles I've owned. Mass fuel consumption at idle (gal/hr) may be lower than the 4.0 (my previous truck was a 3.4) but you really have to get out on the highway to see the benefits of the new engine. I can get 30 mpg for miles at a time on level or gently rolling highway at 55-60. On the other hand, if I cold start at home, drive a mile to the gas station, fill up, drive another mile to the store, etc, all with stop signs and lights, plus idling as I look for parking, I can easily drop the mpg to single digits and it takes a while to recover. With only 380 miles you just don't have enough varied driving to judge the fuel economy yet. It's hard for me to know my true lifetime average because of the damn trip meter resets, but I'm guessing I've averaged around 20.5 - 21 over those 25k miles, with a DCSB TRD OffRoad 4x4, and at least half those miles with an RTT sticking up a foot above roof level.

 

And it makes sense that it's a myth. Think about it. If there was crud at the bottom of the tank, wouldn't it get sloshed around every time the car/truck is driven?
And there's typically a filter/strainer at the pickup of the fuel pump, and then another fuel filter somewhere down the line (on most cars).

Maybe this would hold true on a stationary engine like a backup power generator because crap can deposit at the bottom from never moving, but not an a car.