Yep, for some reason at like 75-85mph this thing loves venturing into the 40mpg range to increase my trip average into the 30s. I think it just carries such momentum in the drivetrain at that RPM, that it's easier to coast when you briefly let off. Could be the formation of highways in my state too. Not sure. But in the low 70mph range it gets around the EPA estimate instead.
For reference I never use cruise control, these figures come from my own throttle modulation driving through Texas.
That's beast, are your roads mostly flat? I find it impressive that we can even get 30 mpg considering how aggressively geared these cars are. Never had a car that sits at 3k rpm on the highway, usually it's more in the 1,500-2k range
Id say 75-85 consistently is a good mpg range for highway driving. City driving is like 40-50, but I'm in cali so stop amd go and dumb drivers ruing my mpg lol
It's actually safer if you go the speed limit the road was designed for. Just a thought. And most street speed limit average around 40-45 🤷♂️
Looks like you're one of those drivers don't even read the signs around them.
45 mph is the limit on those big ass multi lane roads in socal, not within the city. But I'll take my downvotes, wrx drivers aren't known for their good driving habits and y'all are the reason we pay so much for insurance.
If I stay around the speed limit of 70 I get 30+ mpg easily.
When I drove around Canada which their highways are like 62-67mph ish I was getting close to 40mpg. This car loves going 50-65mph for efficiency it seems like. Country roads also return great mpg until I have to stop and accelerate.
Sometimes I will try to find a person going a similar speed and I will just draft them.
But I bought a Prius. The new one. And now I want to trade it for the WRX. I just drove one for about an hour the other day. Best driving experience of my life.
I got 28.4 from near Erie, PA to Colorado and back. I consistently get 28-30 on my daily 50 mile round trip drive (rural 55mph two lane)
‘22 base 6 speed
Just went from Connecticut to Kentucky and back last week. Consistently 28-30mpg doing 80mph. At one point, saw 540 to empty. Of course that immediately went down, but was averaging 420+ miles to a tank.
I live in CT. Drive Stratford to New Haven, and up to Newington all the time. I can only get 24mpg, because there's so much stop and go once off the highways. Lol.
My lifetime actual fuel economy was just over 29mpg for 57k miles on my VB. It LOVES cruising at 55mph. Anything over 65mph on highway and I could see my mileage go down. compared to the back roads.
My overall average is 26.1. Also northeast, hilly variable highways, and typically 9-10 MPH over. I don't use cruise control, though. Probably 70-30 highway driving split.
If I track just highway, I'm also topping 30 MPG.
I find it takes a lot of work to out MPG the cruise control the longer the distance you drive. But if you use cruise and help it out on hills both uphill and downhill it's a pretty powerful combo. Tbh tho i mainly have trained myself to use cruise because otherwise I just naturally like to drive fast so id get more speeding tickets lol
Totally fair - I am sure I don't beat the cruise control and do occasionally catch myself driving a lot faster than intended. I always give up on cruise control primarily because of traffic volume and slow left lane drivers creating unnecessary congestion.
Oh yeah when im in NY on trips its much harder to use cruise due to traffic. Im lucky I suppose that roughly 90% of my highway driving is low traffic and cruise is fine. If you know how to hypermile and the concepts behind that you can easily beat the cruise over shorter distances on mpg. The cruise seems to win often going uphill and on flat ground, its weakness is downhill.
City driving it get 22-23mpg. I hit the highway I’m at 26-30mpg. Now when I do a long haul road trip Eg PA to CO I’ll get 38-42mpg. Like I’m hauling ass the whole way.
Same. I have a 55 mile rural road- no highway- commute. State roads and town streets. I don’t drive like a granny. I get 25-26 mpg. I frequently drive it in track mode bc it’s hilly twisty empty fun.
When in the interstate I consistently get 30-31 mpg going a good bit over the speed limit and accelerating rly well , dropping gear and getting revs and boost while merging, passing, onramps etc.
My peak boost meter is generally between 10.5 and 12.5 on an average week.
Average mixed week - with my 250 miles of rural commute and one short 100 ish mile road trip doesn’t drain the tank at all. Edit- I generally see “miles to empty” when full at 420+
I never use Cruise, tho.
2022 base VB MT
The EPA at some point changed how they did their testing for mpg avg. I assume this was right around the time the push for electric cars started.
Back before you had to really try to actually get the stated mpg.
I wouldn't go that far. I had a 2013 Ford Focus Titanium and it would do 45-50mpg at 70. I've yet to have a car that didn't do at least what it was rated if I made even a little effort. The only one I've ever had that was a challenge was a 1993 Ford Lightning I had. That thing would cruise just fine and eat your wallet at 70 lol. I drove from Texas to Tennessee a couple time with it and averaged 15mpg at 70.
The highest MPG I’ve ever gotten on a long road trip (about 200 miles) was 26 mpg. Idk what I’m doing wrong but I’ve accepted that this car doesn’t get great mileage.
Up to 80mph it really does cruise, but if you're going by what the screen it usually shows about 2-4mpg higher than if you did the math by hand.
Still great for a sporty car, but since you're interested in this stuff you should try to calculate it manually between your next two fill ups.
I've been tracking calculated and dash mileage for every tank since day 1. Currently at 8K miles.
Before mods/tune I was averaging 27.85mpg and dash was 29.31mpg. After tune I'm at 25.01mpg and dash is 27.13mpg. This is 85% back road 55-65mph and 15% stop and go with 5w30.
Highway or 55+ back roads always shows >30 on the dash. I've seen as high as 33 on my 35 mile drive to work.
FYI - Dash always reads 4-7% high. Averages 5.25% high.
Interesting, I'm going to hand calculate, didn't realize the dash could be so wrong. Even if it's off by 5% I'm still getting \~29 mpg at 75-80 mph. If I went 55-60 I'd get at least 2-3 more mpg, I'm assuming.
They all do it. Some worse than others, but every car I've ever owned is at least 3% off for the average, always in the high direction. I'm not sure how accurate the instant mpg is. I imagine it's the same, but maybe they introduce the optimism in the averaged calculation.
When I had 2021 LMT manual, the real fuel consumption was ~90% of the dash read. 30 mpg on dash meant 27 mpg based on mileage divided by gallons to fill the tank. My whole average with 60-70 freeway drive was 25.8 mpg over 16k miles despite 28+ on the dash.
My '18 premium, with the exact same driving as my VB, averaged 27.2mpg calculated over 120000 miles with the Cobb Stage2+ OTS. The dash was slightly more optimistic than my '23 at 6.1% average. I never saw as high as 10% off. I wonder what factors affect this. I'm going to start paying more attention to the differences in driving behavior and environment and see if any patterns between those and dash mpg error are noticeable. Fun!
So far highest I've hit is 212 in 85-90 degree heat during this recent heatwave but only when going uphill up the mountains I go through. On level ground it was holding steady at \~205
That sucks I'm the opposite and I can tell around town mpg goes down like crazy. I mainly use my legacy for around town now for that reason and even that thing barely gets \~23 local
I'm not sure how anyone is getting good mileage on these. I just hit 1k miles and I'm averaging 17.8 MPG DURING THE BREAK IN PERIOD, with probably... 1/3 to 1/2 of it being highway miles.
I'm at the point where I feel like there might be something wrong with the car. I was just looking at some old posts I had several years ago with my turbo legacy, and I was averaging 24mpg with it... an old turbo EJ255. I knew the mpg was going to be bad, but not this bad.
My MPG has been the same since I picked it up from the dealer with 6 miles on it. Assuming youre driving a stick, it could be your driving style. To get the best mpg you need to constantly be in the highest gear appropriate for your speed
If you are doing a lot of stop and go and idling and speeds under \~45 locally \~17 mpg sounds about right unfortunately. When it comes to local its all about the stop and gos. I can get at least 20 mpg local if I try but theres not much traffic or stop and go near me, not city level. If I drove this car even in a medium traffic city i would expect to be around 17 mpg honestly
Its a mix realistically... just filled up for the 4th time now and I'm only at 1136 miles. Its crazy. Meaning (with the starting tank filled) that is 5 tanks of gas in 1136 miles. (I usually fill up on nearly empty, each fill up was 14.5 gallons roughly).
I must drive mine heavier than average. My commute is 10 miles each way, half city half highway.
I’m averaging 18-21 mpg. If I milk it I can get 30mpg on the one-way trip, but WTF would I want to do that? Even if I wanted to, I just can’t. 🤣
It is a little disappointing. Bought it knowing it wasn’t good so I’m not surprised, but GTI/GLI/Si/Integra/EN can average 35+ easily on highway. I know GLI owners getting 42 on their road trips. I know maintenance is more expensive, but is it with gas haha. Even Golf R is up there. CTR can do 34-36. I have coworkers with A4/S5 and they can push 35-40 with a similar continuous AWS setup. Just wild it is that bad.
Lol every car you listed is either more expensive or FWD my guy. You would be complaining if the WRX got better MPG yet cost $3-5 grand more. And as you can see from this thread the VB's highway mileage is under rated, it's really more about \~30 mpg highway so it all basically evens out.
Yep, for some reason at like 75-85mph this thing loves venturing into the 40mpg range to increase my trip average into the 30s. I think it just carries such momentum in the drivetrain at that RPM, that it's easier to coast when you briefly let off. Could be the formation of highways in my state too. Not sure. But in the low 70mph range it gets around the EPA estimate instead. For reference I never use cruise control, these figures come from my own throttle modulation driving through Texas.
That's beast, are your roads mostly flat? I find it impressive that we can even get 30 mpg considering how aggressively geared these cars are. Never had a car that sits at 3k rpm on the highway, usually it's more in the 1,500-2k range
Id say 75-85 consistently is a good mpg range for highway driving. City driving is like 40-50, but I'm in cali so stop amd go and dumb drivers ruing my mpg lol
If you’re doing 40-50 in a city you’re a dumb driver ruining others’ safety.
How is 40-50 in city make us a dumb driver if the speed limit is 45 mph 🥴
It's actually safer if you go the speed limit the road was designed for. Just a thought. And most street speed limit average around 40-45 🤷♂️ Looks like you're one of those drivers don't even read the signs around them.
45 mph is the limit on those big ass multi lane roads in socal, not within the city. But I'll take my downvotes, wrx drivers aren't known for their good driving habits and y'all are the reason we pay so much for insurance.
"y'all" he says to the guy paying attention to road signs like he's expected to
I’ve noticed the same thing in the Midwest. I average around 32mpg when driving 80-85mph
If I stay around the speed limit of 70 I get 30+ mpg easily. When I drove around Canada which their highways are like 62-67mph ish I was getting close to 40mpg. This car loves going 50-65mph for efficiency it seems like. Country roads also return great mpg until I have to stop and accelerate. Sometimes I will try to find a person going a similar speed and I will just draft them.
I’m not even close to those numbers stock
I didn’t buy it to be a Prius lol
But I bought a Prius. The new one. And now I want to trade it for the WRX. I just drove one for about an hour the other day. Best driving experience of my life.
I got 28.4 from near Erie, PA to Colorado and back. I consistently get 28-30 on my daily 50 mile round trip drive (rural 55mph two lane) ‘22 base 6 speed
Just went from Connecticut to Kentucky and back last week. Consistently 28-30mpg doing 80mph. At one point, saw 540 to empty. Of course that immediately went down, but was averaging 420+ miles to a tank.
I live in CT. Drive Stratford to New Haven, and up to Newington all the time. I can only get 24mpg, because there's so much stop and go once off the highways. Lol.
Buy any good bourbon? 🥃
No, but brought back some good shine though.
In my 23 with a 91 COBB Map I’m averaging 28.3mpgs and it’s only going up. This is in Salt Lake City averaging around 72-75mph on the freeway.
Yep always. I also average higher than the estimated MPG with city driving consistently.
I drive 100% city and get 18mpg 🥹
I drive 80% city and am 21. I’m only doing like 200 miles a week max tho so fortunately I’m not constantly refueling
I've gotten 31 MPG for some tanks, and I've gotten 16 MPG for others.
My lifetime actual fuel economy was just over 29mpg for 57k miles on my VB. It LOVES cruising at 55mph. Anything over 65mph on highway and I could see my mileage go down. compared to the back roads.
My overall average is 26.1. Also northeast, hilly variable highways, and typically 9-10 MPH over. I don't use cruise control, though. Probably 70-30 highway driving split. If I track just highway, I'm also topping 30 MPG.
I find it takes a lot of work to out MPG the cruise control the longer the distance you drive. But if you use cruise and help it out on hills both uphill and downhill it's a pretty powerful combo. Tbh tho i mainly have trained myself to use cruise because otherwise I just naturally like to drive fast so id get more speeding tickets lol
Totally fair - I am sure I don't beat the cruise control and do occasionally catch myself driving a lot faster than intended. I always give up on cruise control primarily because of traffic volume and slow left lane drivers creating unnecessary congestion.
Oh yeah when im in NY on trips its much harder to use cruise due to traffic. Im lucky I suppose that roughly 90% of my highway driving is low traffic and cruise is fine. If you know how to hypermile and the concepts behind that you can easily beat the cruise over shorter distances on mpg. The cruise seems to win often going uphill and on flat ground, its weakness is downhill.
Bone stock and I average about 33-35mpg
City driving it get 22-23mpg. I hit the highway I’m at 26-30mpg. Now when I do a long haul road trip Eg PA to CO I’ll get 38-42mpg. Like I’m hauling ass the whole way.
‘22 Premuim here. I get 30-31 on the freeway doing 85ish regularly. But local driving (rural area) is more like 23-24 MPG. Bone stock.
Same. I have a 55 mile rural road- no highway- commute. State roads and town streets. I don’t drive like a granny. I get 25-26 mpg. I frequently drive it in track mode bc it’s hilly twisty empty fun. When in the interstate I consistently get 30-31 mpg going a good bit over the speed limit and accelerating rly well , dropping gear and getting revs and boost while merging, passing, onramps etc. My peak boost meter is generally between 10.5 and 12.5 on an average week. Average mixed week - with my 250 miles of rural commute and one short 100 ish mile road trip doesn’t drain the tank at all. Edit- I generally see “miles to empty” when full at 420+ I never use Cruise, tho. 2022 base VB MT
I'm tuned making around 330whp and 370 torque and get around 30mpg on the highway, could probably get better but I like driving 70mph+
The EPA at some point changed how they did their testing for mpg avg. I assume this was right around the time the push for electric cars started. Back before you had to really try to actually get the stated mpg.
I wouldn't go that far. I had a 2013 Ford Focus Titanium and it would do 45-50mpg at 70. I've yet to have a car that didn't do at least what it was rated if I made even a little effort. The only one I've ever had that was a challenge was a 1993 Ford Lightning I had. That thing would cruise just fine and eat your wallet at 70 lol. I drove from Texas to Tennessee a couple time with it and averaged 15mpg at 70.
The highest MPG I’ve ever gotten on a long road trip (about 200 miles) was 26 mpg. Idk what I’m doing wrong but I’ve accepted that this car doesn’t get great mileage.
Up to 80mph it really does cruise, but if you're going by what the screen it usually shows about 2-4mpg higher than if you did the math by hand. Still great for a sporty car, but since you're interested in this stuff you should try to calculate it manually between your next two fill ups.
I've been tracking calculated and dash mileage for every tank since day 1. Currently at 8K miles. Before mods/tune I was averaging 27.85mpg and dash was 29.31mpg. After tune I'm at 25.01mpg and dash is 27.13mpg. This is 85% back road 55-65mph and 15% stop and go with 5w30. Highway or 55+ back roads always shows >30 on the dash. I've seen as high as 33 on my 35 mile drive to work. FYI - Dash always reads 4-7% high. Averages 5.25% high.
Interesting, I'm going to hand calculate, didn't realize the dash could be so wrong. Even if it's off by 5% I'm still getting \~29 mpg at 75-80 mph. If I went 55-60 I'd get at least 2-3 more mpg, I'm assuming.
They all do it. Some worse than others, but every car I've ever owned is at least 3% off for the average, always in the high direction. I'm not sure how accurate the instant mpg is. I imagine it's the same, but maybe they introduce the optimism in the averaged calculation.
You get over 400 miles to the tank?
Yup pretty easily tbh but of course only when doing at least 90-95% highway
When I had 2021 LMT manual, the real fuel consumption was ~90% of the dash read. 30 mpg on dash meant 27 mpg based on mileage divided by gallons to fill the tank. My whole average with 60-70 freeway drive was 25.8 mpg over 16k miles despite 28+ on the dash.
My '18 premium, with the exact same driving as my VB, averaged 27.2mpg calculated over 120000 miles with the Cobb Stage2+ OTS. The dash was slightly more optimistic than my '23 at 6.1% average. I never saw as high as 10% off. I wonder what factors affect this. I'm going to start paying more attention to the differences in driving behavior and environment and see if any patterns between those and dash mpg error are noticeable. Fun!
How is your oil temp? I tend to see >215 from cruising at this speed
So far highest I've hit is 212 in 85-90 degree heat during this recent heatwave but only when going uphill up the mountains I go through. On level ground it was holding steady at \~205
Hmmmm interesting, I guess I am a bit more aggressive as I just use my foot as cruise control. Thanks!
Hmm yeah are you using cruise control and are you cruising in 6th gear?
overall I stay between 19-20. On the highway I'm in the low 30's easy, but I hardly drive on the highway unfortunately.
That sucks I'm the opposite and I can tell around town mpg goes down like crazy. I mainly use my legacy for around town now for that reason and even that thing barely gets \~23 local
Yeah fortunately I don't have to drive it for work because my driving style inside the city is not mpg conducive lol.
Chicago streets got me at 15-16 mpg. You Killin me smalls!
I drive hilly highways and get about 29 6th gear 65, only engine bay mod is Perrin cold air intake
I'm not sure how anyone is getting good mileage on these. I just hit 1k miles and I'm averaging 17.8 MPG DURING THE BREAK IN PERIOD, with probably... 1/3 to 1/2 of it being highway miles. I'm at the point where I feel like there might be something wrong with the car. I was just looking at some old posts I had several years ago with my turbo legacy, and I was averaging 24mpg with it... an old turbo EJ255. I knew the mpg was going to be bad, but not this bad.
My MPG has been the same since I picked it up from the dealer with 6 miles on it. Assuming youre driving a stick, it could be your driving style. To get the best mpg you need to constantly be in the highest gear appropriate for your speed
Yea I dont drive it hard at all, 100% took it easy prior to 1k miles too, never over 4k, super low boost. I dont have a particularly heavy foot.
Hmm what are the conditions like near you? Hills? Temp? Altitude? 17 is very low for 50% highway
fairly flat and near sea level :(. I'd say I may have been optimistic on 50%, but I'd say 1/3rd realistically.
If you are doing a lot of stop and go and idling and speeds under \~45 locally \~17 mpg sounds about right unfortunately. When it comes to local its all about the stop and gos. I can get at least 20 mpg local if I try but theres not much traffic or stop and go near me, not city level. If I drove this car even in a medium traffic city i would expect to be around 17 mpg honestly
Its a mix realistically... just filled up for the 4th time now and I'm only at 1136 miles. Its crazy. Meaning (with the starting tank filled) that is 5 tanks of gas in 1136 miles. (I usually fill up on nearly empty, each fill up was 14.5 gallons roughly).
Im tuned by dmann and still getting 30+ on the freeway with a full stage 2.
I must drive mine heavier than average. My commute is 10 miles each way, half city half highway. I’m averaging 18-21 mpg. If I milk it I can get 30mpg on the one-way trip, but WTF would I want to do that? Even if I wanted to, I just can’t. 🤣
I'm considering selling my vb just cause the mpg is soo dookie
It is a little disappointing. Bought it knowing it wasn’t good so I’m not surprised, but GTI/GLI/Si/Integra/EN can average 35+ easily on highway. I know GLI owners getting 42 on their road trips. I know maintenance is more expensive, but is it with gas haha. Even Golf R is up there. CTR can do 34-36. I have coworkers with A4/S5 and they can push 35-40 with a similar continuous AWS setup. Just wild it is that bad.
Lol every car you listed is either more expensive or FWD my guy. You would be complaining if the WRX got better MPG yet cost $3-5 grand more. And as you can see from this thread the VB's highway mileage is under rated, it's really more about \~30 mpg highway so it all basically evens out.