"Distance To Empty" variance

I've owned my truck for a little over a year now. From the time I purchased it until about late June-early July of this year, each time I filled up the gas tank, my "Distance To Empty" read 416 miles. Then all of a sudden it started reading 385 miles every time I filled up.

I recently took a week long camping/road trip and my first fill up gave me 385 miles "Distance To Empty". Second fill up, I got 416 miles again. Third fill up, back down to 385 miles. I've filled up once since returning home and my "Distance To Empty" read 385 miles.

Why the sudden change in late June-early July? Why did I get 416 miles in 1/3 fill-ups on my road trip?

 

I have never seen 400. I truly think the truck can go 400 on a tank, but think there is a few gallons left when it gets to zero on the miles left. Just drove mine a mile or so past zero this morning.

 

These trucks can definitely go past 400. I ended up getting 24mpg on a recent trip, all highway miles, and went past the 400.

A lot of the reason why you get those discrepancy in the mileage is from the computer documenting your past mileage driving habits. More than likely your trip between the first fill up and second was due from more highway miles vs. city.

 

Agreed, these trucks can definitely go past 400. I've seen as high as 25.4mpg.

However, my bigger question I guess is; Why was my "Distance To Empty" consistently showing 416 from August 2016-July 2017, then all of a sudden dropped to 385 consistently? My driving habits were the exact same....Oh, maybe not. I did start a new job beginning of July and commute to work 4 days/week. Would that really have altered my "Distance To Empty"? The computer just recalculating my driving from primarily long distance to city driving?

My hesitation to buy into that theory is that the change occurred my very first week of my new job.

 

Mine mostly says 365 on a full tank when I fill up. Wife just did yesterday 360 miles and when i took it to town for gas this morning it was 368.5 miles total and said 7 miles to empty. Average hand calculated for that tank was 19.9 mpg. Pump said it took 18.5 gallons. Not sure how many gallon tank it is, need to look in the manual and haven't yet.

 

I get shitty mpgs on the highway, unless I keep it down to 65ish. Best mileage for me is back country roads.

 

So odd, EVERY TIME I've filled my truck up since I bought it Sept 2016, it always reads 356 miles until empty.

 

My truck always reads 385 miles until empty.

 

I have absolutely no idea what mine shows.

 

I agree 100% with this. I can get almost 25mp on back roads, but 72 on the highway is always 20 mpg or a little less if the wind is blowing.

 

It is definitely not an exact science. It is averaging the last few trips and guestimating what you might average. It is more of an average than anything. I had to drive it past the zero the other day when I realized I forgot my wallet and figured I would go for it anyway lol. I was probably 6 or so miles from where zero would be and it took about 19.124 gallons to fill. So definitely a cushion.

 

We have a 21.1gal tank.

Have a good one.

 

I'm with BlakeM: I've never paid any attention to it. I go by the needle gauge.

 

Mine is almost always 385 too as mentioned earlier by another member. Sometimes it'll be as low as 345 for whatever reason, don't think I've ever seen 400 though. That would be very optimistic for my truck.

I've seen 18-19 MPG on a tank, usually about 17 though. Up to 24 on a trip going 55 with no stops or wind.

Highways though, not a chance. I had the meter go down two miles for every single mile traveled down I70 in Western Kansas on my way home from Colorado at the beginning of this month. I did one sprint where I filled up got totally to empty one one drive and took a picture of the results. Got almost 270 miles out of the whole tank till the "Please Refuel" message came on. Only managed 14.0 MPG the whole way going about 78-79 MPH. Just how it is in this thing. Most I've gotten was probably 380 miles going slower and with no wind on the way to Missouri. Got there in one tank and drove around a bit the next day before refueling.

 

That message is so weird.

I've had my truck for a year. ONE time it said 415 or something like that (over 400 for sure). Every other time it has said 385. The 4xx was sometime mid-year ownership with no changes at all.

 

Makes me wonder how people are reporting such differences? Why is there no consistency? I don't buy that the number reflects what the computer has learned about our driving because my truck read 416 miles to empty since day 1 and the change to 385 was immediate and random.

 

Whoa. I've never seen mpg's that low over that distance. I have noticed though, that anything above 65mph causes the mpg's to start dropping
quickly.

 

You should see mine. It's way lower than that.

I don't trust the miles to empty at all. Mine is usually about half of what the gauge shows.

 

The truck calculates distance to empty off of 19 gallons, we have a 21 gallon tank

 

Call me crazy but in my experience it’s all about the grade of the road and far less about the speed.

Driving the same stretch of road, I only see about a 1MPG difference between 65mph and 75mph.

On my way to work, where there’s virtually no elevation change, I can get 23mpg doing 75mph. On the way to the coast, where there are long gradual changes in elevation, I’ll only get 18-19mpg doing 75