Audi Mileage Marathon: Day 2 - 400 miles and we land in Cleveland

As day 2 of the Marathon draws to a close we're approaching Cleveland. We left Capitol Hill in D.C. about seven and half hours and 400 miles ago in the Q7 TDI. The fuel gauge is showing just under half a tank of diesel left and the diesel SUV is clearly in its natural element cruising the interstates through Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Just before we left D.C. this morning we got the official results from day one and my co-driver and I averaged 28.8 mpg on the run from New York. Right now the trip computer is showing 30.5 mpg. The top Q7 on day one averaged 30.6 mpg although that driver was running solo. Moving down the size scale, the Q5s ranged from 32.3 mpg to 38.0 mpg powered by the same 3.0L V6 diesel as the Q7. Among the cars, the best A4 managed 40.6 mpg with the V6 while Denise McCluggage and Kate McLeod pushed their A3 TDI to 46.7 mpg with no attempt to hyper-mile. Tomorrow it's off to Chicago.
Our travel and lodging for this media event was provided by the manufacturer.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ray Holan 7:57PM (10/07/2008)
Managed to catch a glimpse of the Q7 on I-480 before it turned North onto I-271 about 4:50PM on Tuesday. Wish there was an official stop in Cleveland where I could have kicked the tires of these new-generation clean diesels. Good luck on the rest of the trip everyone.
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gorr 8:43PM (10/07/2008)
Maybe the next car trip will be organized with batteries cars from new-york to los-angeles with quick chargers along the roads every 100 miles. They can be allowed to bring some electric cables too.
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GoodCheer 9:17AM (10/08/2008)
AC Propulsion took a Rav4-EV from San Dimas, CA to Washington DC almost 10 years ago. They were towing a trailer-mounted generator.
In other news, there are 10's of thousands of quick-charge locations in N. America already. Most have dozens of 50Amp x 240V charging stations. Find one near you here:
http://www.rvparkfinder.net/
Guy Stella 12:41PM (10/08/2008)
I had not heard of this before, but happened to see one of the A4s going north on I-71 into Cleveland as I was coming home from work yesterday evening. So I just now googled and found this. An A3 TDI would be very cool. If I had known that Denise McCluggage was out there, I might have stopped her car and offered to buy dinner, just to hear some great stories.
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Jason 9:41AM (10/16/2008)
I saw the AMM cars @ the Botanical Gardens and Glidden House and I must say. Very, Very cool guys.
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