V70: Engine What MPG can I expect?

[osbourne one-nil]

Good point - while fiddling yesterday I swapped the units to US and it had the appearance of drastically reducing my fuel economy. I assume a US gallon is smaller than ours!

[I-S]

Originally Posted by clivea

Have the US test figures been converted to imperial gallons?

Yes - the spec lists 30mpgUS urban, 40mpgUS highway. My conversion was actually slightly off - 36 and 48 are closer mpgUK figures.

You can see this with many cars - USA EPA for the Jaguar XF 3.0 V6 Supercharged (petrol) is 20.4mpgUK urban (17 US) and 33.6mpgUK highway (28US). The EU figures for that car are 20.3 and 40.4 mpg UK.

The point being that the EPA tests seem closer to real-life fuel consumption. Of course, it's hard to find EPA results for diesels because there's not so many of them on sale in the US.

We recently had a hire car in the US which had EPA figures of 18 mpgUS urban, 30mpgUS highway. Over the 2500 miles we drove it, we found that pretty accurate - we got about 17mpg around town and 29ish on the freeways.

No figure of merit like this is ever going to be truly accurate - there's too many variables involved. However, the EU figures have descended into farce because of the tax situation across europe being so heavily based on co2 and fuel consumption.

The real irony is that if the governments truly wanted to tax CO2 emissions then they would simply have to tax fuel at a flat rate - there is an exactly known quantity of carbon in 1 litre of petrol (or rather more in 1 litre of diesel).

[osbourne one-nil]

Just a quick one on this, in case anyone's interested, but returning from Herefordshire to Cumbria a couple of weeks ago, and with the car loaded with 5 people and the boot packed....and with less than 1000miles on the clock, I managed 52.5mpg, which I'm delighted with! I couldn't get above 65mph until north of Preston, but even so, I think it bodes very well. Since then, pootling about the Eden Valley, with its hills and narrow lanes, I'm still getting mid 40s, so happy boy.

[tommyweaves]

Originally Posted by osbourne one-nil

I picked mine up yesterday - oh it's lovely to have an automatic again, to the extent that I almost don't care!

I did about 100 miles in it yesterday, from Kendal to Penrith along the A6, and then pottering about the Eden Valley, and I got 38mpg out of it, so quite pleased with that already, as I know it's only going to get better. Taking it down to Bristol tomorrow, so that will give it a nice leisurely drive.

This is my 4th V70. The first one was called Lovejoy, the second Bernard, the third didn't have a name because I started to realise it was silly, but the kids want to call this one Mr Cholmondley Warner.

That's excellent! Kids have a sense of humour! My daughter named mine Jack.

[iep]

Not that I don't agree that car manufacturers are getting good at tweaking their engines and test procedures to optimise for the test (and not real life). But, the one thing that I am told has improved (and quite suddenly between the old 2.0D and the new D3 etc) is the fuel injection system.

As I understand it, the simple action of increasing the fuel pressure at the injector (I say simple, I don't know how to do it) improves fuel atomisation considerably and so improves burn rate. This does immediately increase mpg. The cost is a more complex fuel delivery system (which is where the bulk of diesel engine R&D has taken place over the lest few years for all manufacturers).

I was told all this by a Volvo mechanic in Sweden when I was last there. He was very proud of the new D5 (215bhp) engine's resultant power and mpg. I have to admit I have not second sourced this info but it did make sense to me.

Cheers,

iep

[andy8442]

Just nudging 4k now and the overall average is 44.8mpg but more noticeably every motorway run is easily 50+mpg ( I tend to set the cruise at 77mph) . I think the town driving is dragging the average down a fair bit.

[Nick44]

Good Luck.
I got rid of my 2008 V70 D5 coz it was the thirstyist thing ever. I never managed more than 33mpg, decent runs and not much town driving. No bull, I got better MPG from my 2005 petrol T5 than I ever got from the D5, same journeys, same driving style. I now have a 2010 petrol T6, loads more fun, and not much worse than the D5, ( about 28 MPG) and petrol is so much cheaper than derv.

I would never ever buy another diesel car.

[tommyweaves]

Originally Posted by Nick44

Good Luck.
I got rid of my 2008 V70 D5 coz it was the thirstyist thing ever. I never managed more than 33mpg, decent runs and not much town driving. No bull, I got better MPG from my 2005 petrol T5 than I ever got from the D5, same journeys, same driving style. I now have a 2010 petrol T6, loads more fun, and not much worse than the D5, ( about 28 MPG) and petrol is so much cheaper than derv.

I would never ever buy another diesel car.

Depends what kind of journeys you do. If I lived in London with the average speed of 12mph I'd have chosen a petrol car over a diesel. Fortunately I don't live in London and I get in excess of 600 miles (sometimes over 700 miles) from my tank of diesel!

[Thehood]

Expect around 38 mpg tops and you won't be disappointed

[I-S]

I would expect more, as we're currently averaging around 38 with a D5 Polestar Geartronic and that's just my 12 mile commute across the pennines, and I do indulge the right foot on the open roads.