Cars.com calculates the real CAFE numbers with True Mileage Index!
TMI. What does that mean? Well, it usually means 'Too Much Information,' but in the case of fuel mileage, there is truly no such thing. Everybody and their brother wants to know what kind of mileage they are likely to get out of their next new car purchase, so we'll take any information we can get. With that in mind, Cars.com has gone to the trouble of calculating the mileage statistics of all the major brands sold in the United States and has sorted them by average miles per gallon. While the list doesn't actually break down each manufacturer further by model, it is still helpful in some way. As you may be aware, CAFE mileage statistics aren't actually representative of what a given manufacturer is likely to achieve, as they are adjusted for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, Cars.com chose to go by the EPA's mileage ratings to calculate its figures. For the same reason, the impending fuel mileage requirements being proposed by the Feds aren't quite as harsh as they might seem. For instance, CAFE's 2007 rating for Honda's domestic passenger-car fleet comes in at 33.5 mpg, while Cars.com estimates a much more realistic 24.9 mpg. So, the EPA's estimations are still useful for comparing individual car models, and Cars.com's TMI rating is useful for comparing the manufacturers themselves. Remember, though... your mileage may vary.
[Source: Cars.com]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tankd0g 9:58AM (8/02/2008)
If some car mag wants my money, test all the cars by driving the speed limit on the highway and in town, going easy on the throttle. Then at least I'll know what to be shooting for or better.
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ron 12:24PM (8/02/2008)
This is stupid. Most brands have several different types of vehicles (cars, trucks, SUVs).
If I want to buy a Chevy Cobalt or a Nissan Versa, these numbers are clouded by Chevy Tahoes and Nissan Armadas, so they really don't mean anything.
If it's not broken down by model, I really don't see the point.
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Derek 8:45AM (8/03/2008)
All this proves is that the same vehicle (or same group of vehicles) can get different mileage if driven differently. What a shocker.
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bc 3:16PM (8/02/2008)
Cars.com has it ass-backwards. They start with the premise that CAFE mileage is somehow inaccurate and that EPA mileage is more accurate and not "adjusted for all sorts of reasons." Neither is the case; they measure different things for different reasons. CAFE can be thought of as an approximation of what a vehicle is capable of when driven carefully, EPA sticker has been repeatedly adjusted, sometimes quite arbitrarily in response to complaints, over the past 30 years to attempt to replicate more "real-world" conditions. But the real world has millions of people who punch the accelerator too hard, consistently drive 10-20 mph over the speed limit, park with the engine idling so they can run the A/C while waiting for people to come out of air-conditioned buildings, don't bother to keep their engine and tires properly maintained, etc. The auto manufacturers should not be penalized for the bad habits of the typical US driver, and a careful driver ought to be able to substantially beat the EPA sticker mileage--my vehicle is rated 21/28 by the current procedure but I routinely get closer to 26/34, which is even a bit better than the 24/31 rating under the most recent previous procedure.
The manufacturers also should not be penalized for the fact that ethanol has lower energy density than gasoline when they pursue the government's goal for alternative-energy vehicles, yet Cars.com explicitly does so; one of the supposedly illegitimate adjustments to CAFE accounts for this difference.
Finally, I don't understand why manufacturer fleet mileage is relevant to the vehicle purchaser at all; s/he should be interested in what the specific vehicles being considered can do. Unless you have the mentality that Toyota has a high fleet average so that must mean the Sequoia is good choice for an economical vehicle; it may be a good choice if you really require a vehicle that size, but the fleet mileage has no relevance to that. EPA sticker mileage is an imperfect measure and is best used as a relative guide when comparing vehicles. If you're an oafish driver, you might get even worse than the sticker says; if you're careful about economical driving, you ought to get better.
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