fuel efficiency?happyfunpaulDecember 21 2011, 01:27:01 UTC
How's the mileage?
While I am in no hurry to buy another car (my Honda Civic is 7 years old and running fine), I saw a couple smart cars on the road last week and got to thinking about getting one as my next car, whenever that would be, since nowadays the vast majority of my driving is local. But then, someone pointed out that smart cars in the US, unlike those in Europe, get surprisingly lousy fuel efficiency (in the vicinity of 36 mph rather than the 50+ in Europe) . I don't know why. I do know that gas efficiency is measured someone differently in the US and Europe, and the diesel smart cars do better than gasoline, but none of that is enough to explain a 50% difference in mileage.
36 mph isn't significantly better than my Civic gets (and not as good as my previous Civic hatchback, which was smaller, got), so if smart cars really do that poorly, I don't see myself bothering.
So far, I'm getting just around 40mpg, average, maybe slightly more. That includes driving on the interstate both during and without traffic, as well as back roads. I also spend significant time sitting at lights, but I'm still showing just over 40mpg if you average what the odometer shows as total miles, over the amount of gas I've used. I've driven about 245 miles on six gallons.
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While I am in no hurry to buy another car (my Honda Civic is 7 years old and running fine), I saw a couple smart cars on the road last week and got to thinking about getting one as my next car, whenever that would be, since nowadays the vast majority of my driving is local. But then, someone pointed out that smart cars in the US, unlike those in Europe, get surprisingly lousy fuel efficiency (in the vicinity of 36 mph rather than the 50+ in Europe) . I don't know why. I do know that gas efficiency is measured someone differently in the US and Europe, and the diesel smart cars do better than gasoline, but none of that is enough to explain a 50% difference in mileage.
36 mph isn't significantly better than my Civic gets (and not as good as my previous Civic hatchback, which was smaller, got), so if smart cars really do that poorly, I don't see myself bothering.
So, what's been your experience?
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