Abysmal MPG - RTL-E

11659 Views 76 Replies 29 Participants Last post by RTP2017, Aug 28, 2016

RTP2017

Discussion Starter · Aug 8, 2016 (Edited)

8/28/16 EDIT: It would appear that my RTL-E does NOT, in fact, get "Abysmal MPG," as I had originally feared. As can be seen in this later post, a 72-mile highway test gave me a good fuel efficiency. New readers to this thread might be interested in reading some of my questions/conclusions noted in that thread. If I have any new pertinent experiences, I'll be sure to come back to this thread and update it again.

8/9/16 EDIT: To new readers of this thread, I want to point out that as of yet, my observations should still be viewed as "inconclusive." It's entirely possible that I haven't been paying close enough attention to my driving conditions and patterns on previous tanks of gas to call my mileage out of spec. I'm planning to run some more controlled tests very soon.

I want to be sure I'm not unjustly maligning the new Ridgeline with unreasonable expectations.

vvv ORIGINAL POST vvv

I'm not sure what's going on, but I appear to be getting downright horrible fuel efficiency on my '17 RTL-E. On my last two fill-ups that I've tracked fuel consumption and I've calculated 14.5 and 14.7 MPG! After the first one I thought I might need to adjust my driving style or something, so I started paying very close attention to accelerating, and drove mainly in ECO mode (except when I had to quickly cool down the interior with max AC on a few trips).

I'm absolutely certain that I'm no lead-foot, and I use ACC whenever I have the opportunity. I do about 60-75% city driving, and catch the occasional Southern California traffic jam on the freeway, but this is FAR below my worst expectation for efficiency.

Has anyone else experienced such a low calculated MPG as this? I'm planning to have a chat with my dealer on this soon, but I might give it one more tank to be sure.

I've filled up at Chevron and Costco. 87 octane.

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Doobiewah

· #2 · Aug 8, 2016

I pretty much have done all city driving over the last several weeks and am getting 18-19. Although your mileage will vary, that sounds about the lowest I've heard on this forum. Your idea of trying one more tank and then reporting it to the dealer is a good one.

Have you checked your tire pressures?

RTP2017

Discussion Starter · #3 · Aug 8, 2016

Good idea RE: tire pressures. I checked them last tank, but I should double check again now that I've just filled up.

quickshoe

· #4 · Aug 8, 2016

The traffic jam and stop and go will kill that mileage in a heartbeat.

Next time you find yourself driving around and there isn't any traffic at all....fill it up. Get on the freeway. Drive 65-70mph for 20 miles or so, turn around and come back to the same pump and top it off.

Total mileage / gallons utilized = see what you get. That will let you know if you have a problem or not.

fraugher

· #5 · Aug 8, 2016

Is there an ECM learning / whatever type reset that can impact this?

When my SO's subbie was new it would start to lose mpg after a few tanks... I would run a tank of 93 and it would hop back up. Did this about 10x over the course of 20k miles, now don't need to do it anymore. I have no explanation as to why this happened, and the car never felt different performance-wise.

Carsmak

· #6 · Aug 8, 2016

quickshoe said:
The traffic jam and stop and go will kill that mileage in a heartbeat.

True, but that's G1 Territory for MPG, Completely unacceptable

quickshoe said:
Next time you find yourself driving around and there isn't any traffic at all....fill it up. Get on the freeway. Drive 65-70mph for 20 miles or so, turn around and come back to the same pump and top it off.

You do realize he's in Southern California, that rarely happens, like "RARELY EVER"

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RTP2017

Discussion Starter · #7 · Aug 8, 2016

Carsmak said:
You do realize he's in Southern California, that rarely happens, like "RARELY EVER"

Ha, no kidding! But I could fill up, hit the very low traffic toll road for a 30 mile round trip and fill up again. If I'm still draining gas like a freight train, that'll do about 2 gallons.

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RTP2017

Discussion Starter · #8 · Aug 8, 2016

fraugher said:
Is there an ECM learning / whatever type reset that can impact this?

When my SO's subbie was new it would start to lose mpg after a few tanks... I would run a tank of 93 and it would hop back up. Did this about 10x over the course of 20k miles, now don't need to do it anymore. I have no explanation as to why this happened, and the car never felt different performance-wise.

Also a good thing to wonder about. Since I bought the truck rather early, I "took what I could get" with the one that the dealer manager had been driving himself. It had 113 miles on it when I drove it off the lot. I wonder if he was just standing on it everywhere he drove. :act018:

Carsmak

· #9 · Aug 8, 2016

RTP2017 said:
Ha, no kidding! But I could fill up, hit the very low traffic toll road for a 30 mile round trip and fill up again. If I'm still draining gas like a freight train, that'll do about 2 gallons.

Wasn't sure where in the OC you were, Toll Road would be a perfect for a test. Don't forget to use the same pump and the "click" stop fill method, if possible within an hour or two so the temp stays the same.

Map

· #10 · Aug 8, 2016

I was able to get 14.9mpg on a Ram 1500, with crew cab that I rented last year. That drive is about 3.5 miles on freeway and 13.5 miles on street one way and all street driving home in afternoon. That truck is big, heavy, high off the ground and has the 5.7l hemi. It did have cylinder deactivation but it didn't engage that often. I would check your tire pressures and make sure parking brake isn't partially engaged.
The other question is how long is your commute to work? If it is really short and the engine doesn't fully warm up in that time, there's your answer.

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rxitrxit

· #11 · Aug 8, 2016

RTP, I got better MPGs than that from my G1. Not much better, but better. Are you using the remote start a lot to cool the vehicle?

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zroger73

· #12 · Aug 8, 2016

RTP2017, just out of curiosity, how does your trip computer compare to your calculated fuel economy? Over my first 1,000 miles, the trip computer has averaged 1.8 MPG higher than the manual calculation. I'm wondering if you're seeing a larger discrepancy. If so, have you double checked your manual calculations?

martyn1075

· #13 · Aug 8, 2016

zroger73 said:
RTP2017, just out of curiosity, how does your trip computer compare to your calculated fuel economy? Over my first 1,000 miles, the trip computer has averaged 1.8 MPG higher than the manual calculation. I'm wondering if you're seeing a larger discrepancy. If so, have you double checked your manual calculations?

I have noticed this as well but also your truck computer trip mpg vs your truck computer average mpg is slightly off, and not always in favour the way one would want to see it.

quickshoe

· #14 · Aug 8, 2016

Carsmak said:
True, but that's G1 Territory for MPG, Completely unacceptable.

You do realize he's in Southern California, that rarely happens, like "RARELY EVER"

It's also Honda Fit territory when it takes you 2 hours to get from LAX to the 105/605 with the A/C on full blast.

Yep. I "drive" in it every single day. I don't know where in OC he is. I would suggest the 241, but too damn hilly to get a true picture. It's all about time of night he gives this a shot.

The vehicle rarely getting above 3rd gear in the trans and spending 33% of it's time idling at a dead stop isn't going to give you any idea if something's wrong.

AnimalRescue

· #15 · Aug 8, 2016

Well mine is very strange also. I've had my RTL-E for a little over a week and honestly haven't had anywhere really to go--barely have even 150 miles on it yet. But every time I take a little trip to the store or the like, the mpg keeps increasing. Today I drove less than ten miles and the mpg crept up from 15.3 to 15.6. It does this every time I drive it. It doesn't go down, just slowly up. Of course I'll be tracking it as I go along and right now it doesn't make a big difference to me, so tracking it by fill ups should be a little more accurate!

RTP2017

Discussion Starter · #16 · Aug 9, 2016 (Edited)

Thanks, everyone, for all the great feedback! I had a little time before heading in to work today, so I tried a quick run up the toll road. I wasn't able to do a perfect test, unfortunately, but it shows a pretty "meh" result nonetheless...

1) Filled up at Chevron close to the 241 Toll Road south of Rancho Santa Margarita.

2) Filled the tires to ~40 PSI (they were actually a few PSI below 35 again after I'd filled them up a few weeks ago)... Yeah, I know that's high, but I was racing the gas station compressor timeout and the clock to get to work.

3) Drove ~1.5 miles to the bottom of the 241 Toll Road on Oso.

4) Set the cruise to 67mph with no traffic and the AC to auto at 2°F below ambient and drove to the Santiago Canyon Road exit. The last part of this is a pretty good uphill grade. The trip computer said I was at about 25.5mpg before the grade, and about 24-ish at the Santiago exit.

5) Turned around and headed back south on the 241, which "unwound" the uphill grade.

6) Pulled off at Alton and hit the Chevron about 3/4 mile from the exit. Trip computer read mid-24 range (forgot to write it down before resetting - bah!)

Total fill-up to fill-up was 29.1 miles and 1.453 gallons. So for about 90-95% easy-cruising highway miles, I got 20mpg, just about on the nuts.

So it wasn't a perfect test. Wasn't the same pump, was a relatively short trip, had the AC on and there was a pretty good grade to climb (even though it was looking pretty good before the grade, I'm not trusting the computer). Also, I ran the trip without the ECO mode engaged. Still, the trip computer was off by a fair margin, and approximately the same offset as I've noticed from my previous two tanks.

I'm planning to take some time to repeat the test under better conditions to see if I can get a more trustable result. So far, though, I'm feeling a bit underwhelmed. After reading some reports on the forums about some truly stellar efficiencies from other owners, I'm beginning to wonder if I have a dud.

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Map

· #17 · Aug 9, 2016

I'm not familiar with the 241 but how about you try a longer drive say 5 all the way down to oceanside and back on a saturday morning. It should be pretty clear. I'm following this thread to see what you get. I've got a turbo charged 2005 subaru rated at 17/24. The Ridgeline is attractive because it has a better mpg rating. If that's not really true, I'm going to be hesitant to pull the trigger. My wife has a Durango with 3.6L engine, 5 speed transmission and drives only street. She gets mid 15 mpg, so what the hell is it with your Ridgeline? Something doesn't make sense. How many miles on the engine. Maybe it just needs more break in miles.

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Brianflys

· #18 · Aug 9, 2016

Head to Vegas and back on I-15. That is a real test to get highway mileage. City driving is notoriously difficult to test, particularly where you have the freeway backups and long traffic lights. Also, "airing out" the engine with sustained higher speeds has always helped with my mileage. I had a 2015 FIT that would start out on the freeway in the low to mid 30s but after a couple hundred miles (cross country on I-8 and I-10) in CA and AZ would get into the low 40s. Actual, based on fillups. That would carry over to better in-town driving for quite a while.

IMO, a 29 mile trip in a new truck may not be the best test. Run that sucker for a couple thousand miles and then start checking the mileage on longer leg runs, city and highway. Just MO, based on my experience.

Good luck!

RTP2017

Discussion Starter · #19 · Aug 9, 2016

rxitrxit said:
RTP, I got better MPGs than that from my G1. Not much better, but better. Are you using the remote start a lot to cool the vehicle?

When I do the remote start (maybe 3-5x per tank), it's only running for a few minutes before I get in to start driving. I'll make a point to not remote start for the next full tank. Good suggestion.

RTP2017

Discussion Starter · #20 · Aug 9, 2016

Map said:
I'm not familiar with the 241 but how about you try a longer drive say 5 all the way down to oceanside and back on a saturday morning. It should be pretty clear. I'm following this thread to see what you get. I've got a turbo charged 2005 subaru rated at 17/24. The Ridgeline is attractive because it has a better mpg rating. If that's not really true, I'm going to be hesitant to pull the trigger. My wife has a Durango with 3.6L engine, 5 speed transmission and drives only street. She gets mid 15 mpg, so what the hell is it with your Ridgeline? Something doesn't make sense. How many miles on the engine. Maybe it just needs more break in miles.

We're on the same page here. The toll road was imperfect, but conveniently not too far out of my way for work today and zero traffic. After climbing that grade, though, I knew that it wouldn't be a good way to get a baseline. The 5 down to Oceanside and back has just a few hills around San Juan Capistrano, but other than that it's nice and level. One of these mornings that I get up crazy early, I'll give that a try. I'll try to do it soon, too, because this really has me stumped. I just passed 1000 miles during my short test this morning, and I've been seeing some reports from other owners that are easily 50-75% better than what I'm getting. I wouldn't mind being a bit low, but that seems pretty nuts.

For those who have mentioned the crazy heat down here in SoCal, I hear ya. When I make my long run soon, I'll try to do it at a time when I can run without AC (and without sweating like crazy).

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