Manual gas mileage.

San Francisco is so hilly I’m mostly in 1st or 2nd to get around. Gotta keep it in 1st for the really steep ones. Then in the residential areas it’s one block, stop sign. One block, stop sign. Not exactly conducive to economical driving conditions. I’m also not gonna say I’m not aggressive, I’m from New York City originally and that’s where I learned to drive...

Who knows.

 

Here's a quick addition to this thread, Monday I flat-towed a 2,800 LBS car with my Taco 70 miles, all highway, no grades and basically no hills (towed it from San Marcos to my house in central OC). Basically no stop and go traffic save for 10 minutes or so. I stayed in 4th gear and kept it at 60 (Revs were right at 3K) and according to the truck I got 18.2 MPG. Had I gone farther or had the truck been loaded (it was empty except for me and a passenger) or gone over a grade I'm sure that number would have dropped quickly. Prior to hooking-up to the car I had ~200 miles of highway and some canyon driving on that tank of gas and was showing 19.4 MPG. I can live with that however for longer trips I'll still use my Silverado when something needs to be towed. It was my first time towing with my Taco though and it actually did a little better than I expected.

 

The easiest way to think about it is like gears on a bike. Lower gears are easy, but higher gears are hard. As you build speed, the higher gears aren't so hard anymore and takes less power to turn. Overdrive just means, in the simplest terms, that the driveshaft turns faster than the engine inputs.

 

It was about 30 or so early on. Toward the end, it was around 27 or so.

A low range and a fifth gear with a better spread overall would have done wonders.


Here again, the Taco is no great sacrifice, except for garage space.

 

Is anyone seeing a noticeable improvement in fuel economy from adding a tonneau cover to the truck?

 

Not really. A Softopper definitely has a small negative effect. Other things have larger effects though. Weather and fuel blend.

 

Interesting. I would definitely like to see the airflow around this thing in a wind tunnel. I would figure the tailgate is a huge spoiler, but maybe that's not the case anymore. In my 1st gen, just putting a camper shell on bumped up the fuel economy by 2 MPGs.

 

Trucks generally flow air well over the open beds. I think studies were done at least 20yrs ago that showed there was no real difference between TG up, TG off, and a bed cover. IIRC, TG off had a slight negative affect due to breaking the bubble of air behind the discontinuity of the cab?

I've seen it recently when an open bed truck with dry leaves in the back was running down the highway. The leaves would circulate gently until one hit the air stream over the cab and it smoothly flowed out of the bed.

Like I said, there are much larger factors at place with other aspects.

 

Ya, weather is a big one in northern Michigan.

Winter comes, temperatures drop, they change the fuel blends, and mileage goes to crap!

But my new Taco isn’t gonna see snow. It’s not even seen RAIN yet. I’ve got my old hand-me-down beater Rav for that.

Ya, I know: buy a four wheel drive truck and only drive it on sunny days.
Oh! The humanity!

 

You are not the only one, my pavement princess doesn't leave the garage all winter. You can get a break on your insurance too for the limited use.

 

Great movie.

 

You're not kidding! Currently getting about 17 MPG commuting to work (including a warm-up). I was seeing as high as 23 in the summer pretty regularly at 70.

 

Also note the tailgates on most trucks have a lip on them these days, including the Tacoma. Airflow is the exact reason why. I think the Frontier and Gladiator are the only 2020 model trucks without said lip. The Titan kind of has one as does the Tundra. But all of the other of the Big 3' pickups, the Ridgeline, and the Tacoma all have that lip.

 

The lip actually has a purpose, eh? I thought it was just another design trend like the /NAME\ stamped at the bottom of every tailgate now.
The cold temps the last few days along with only driving short trips has been killing my mpgs

 

Yeah, I've seen the lip advertised as a spoiler. Another reason I figured the open bed would impact fuel economy more than it does.

 

My first vehicle to have a spoiler

 

Yeah, you'd be surprised how many design "trends" are actually serving a purpose.

 

Yes. The mythbusters also did some testing on the tailgate down method well before those were a thing and, if I remember right, the truck with the tailgate down ran out of gas 5 miles before the tailgate up truck did.

 

Don't try and tell me those blinky lights serve a purpose...