[RTP2017]

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.

 

[RTP2017]

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

 

[RTP2017]

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.

 

[RTP2017]

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:

 

[RTP2017]

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.

 

[RTP2017]

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]

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).

 

[RTP2017]

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?

It appears to be off by ~2-3 MPG over manual calculation. On my short run today, it might have been even 4 over. I'll be sure to record it on my controlled test.

 

[RTP2017]

I do 95% city driving and I'm getting between 16 and 18. What's more, I am a bit of a lead foot. I like to power up hills and accelerate my chosen line out of curves.

Question: I may have missed this earlier in the thread but how are you figuring miles per gallon? My numbers are from Fuelly. Nothing about the onboard MPG figuring software strikes me as being very reliable. When the Mid and the 8 inch differ by 4 to 5 miles per gallon sometimes you have to wonder.

I've been checking by hand (calculator) and the GasTracker+ app from Fuelly.

Does the fuel efficiency show up in the 8-inch screen somewhere? I've only been using the Trip A counter above the steering column.

 

[RTP2017]

... Here is my gas mileage over the first 5,000 miles (doesn't include all fill-ups) based on calculations from fill to fill against mileage. Note that in a couple of cases I compare it to the dash estimate, which appears to me to be pretty meaningless.
...

Thanks for the detailed data, Lifesaver1. I'll start a list like that and add it to the first post in this thread once I have some more data.

 

[RTP2017]

For those following this thread, I'd like to point out the disclaimer I added to the original post. If it turns out that I'm just not paying close enough attention to my driving conditions and patterns to explain my lower than expected mileage, I want to be sure this thread doesn't unjustly stamp the Ridgeline with a scarlet letter of inefficiency.

Further testing tentatively scheduled for this weekend!

 

[RTP2017]

RTP2017, were you able to do a mpg check on the freeway this past weekend?

Sorry for the lack of updates - new baby boy = never time to screw around doing what I want to do! > Unfortunately I wasn't able to do the full down-and-back to Oceanside (probably the best "flatland" test I can do without a long trip). But I did get a decent trip out to my in-laws to let them all go "goo" at our boy. I drove like a grandma on her way to church the whole tank, but did have about 10 minutes of idle in a parking lot to calm the baby when he got fussy in his car seat.

Here are the calculated results for that tank:

187 miles / 9.813 gallons = 19.1 MPG

The tank was about 80% highway miles. ECON mode was off the entire time.

So it wasn't great, but it also wasn't as horrible as my previous tanks. I'm still anxious to get out on that long test.

 

[RTP2017]

Thanks for the feedback, Martyn1075 and Uncle Festus. I'm still leaning toward the possibility (or maybe just hoping) that my driving profile and AC usage are the explanation of the low MPG. I'm not looking forward to the rigmarole of convincing the dealer that I'm driving a lemon.

I'll keep reporting my results here for those watching, and I'm still planning to run that flat loop down to Oceanside as soon as possible.

 

[RTP2017]

I've had an RTL-E for 1 week tomorrow and am still on my first tank of gas but...... even on echo mode I can't seem to get over 13.5 MPG? AC is on but it's not that hot here (80 degrees). At this point I'm hoping that its a break-in period issue.

Sorry to hear that, Jim. Consider tracking you fuel-ups on an app from Fuelly, and pay close attention to your driving style. As someone said above, make a point to see how the instant economy bars react to your accelerations.

Good luck and keep us posted!

 

[RTP2017]

I stopped by my dealer today and happened to run into the store manager who had driven my RTL-E around for a day before I bought it. I mentioned the poor fuel economy to him and he took me to see the Service Manager.

She's going to check the dealer network (or whatever specific phrase she used, I don't remember) to see if anyone else has reported unusually low mileage on the Ridgeline. I told her my plan to run that loop down to Oceanside and back, and she agreed that'd be useful data.

So at least I've gotten the issue in front of them, and we'll see where that takes me. More to come...

 

[RTP2017]

I have an RTL-E, and have done a mix of highway/city driving. First tank of gas I got 20.7 mpg, the second 23.9. Calculated both based on the math, not the indicator in the truck.

Out of the 4 full tanks I've recorded, I've gotten 14.5, 14.7, 19.1, 18. The 19.1 was about 80-90% highway miles. I still haven't gotten my chance to do a 100% highway test, but no matter how you split it, those numbers are pretty depressing. It's a good thing gas is cheap right now. :surprise:

 

[RTP2017]

Anyone who is getting outrageous gas-milage -- even when calculated by hand -- should check their odometer's accuracy against the mile posts on an Interstate.

That's an excellent idea. I'll give that a check when I do my highway test.

 

[RTP2017]

I finally got my chance to do the run down south and back, with some surprising results! (Incidentally, the last tank of 6 gallons went 19 MPG with about 30/70 city/hwy driving.)

- Fueled up at Chevron on Crown Valley in Mission Viejo
- Headed south toward Oceanside

- NO AIR CONDITIONING​

- Cruise control set to 69mph (because I'm a child)
- Tire pressure: 38 PSI​

- Stopped in Carlsbad (since the traffic was light) at the 7-11 on Carlsbad Villiage Dr to use the restroom

- Miles at the half point: 36
- Computer reported MPG: 27.6
​

- Headed back north

- NO AIR CONDITIONING
- Cuising at 69mph (still a child)​

- Fueled up at the same pump at Chevron

- Total miles: 72.1
- Computer reported MPG (this leg): 27.7
- Computer reported MPG (total trip): 27.8
- Tire pressure: 39 PSI​

- Actual calculated mileage

- Miles: 72.1
- Gallons: 2.851
- MPG: 25.29​

- Apple Maps GPS reports the trip is exactly 72 miles, so it would appear that the odometer works fine.


So! It would appear that my RTL-E does NOT, in fact, have abysmal MPG! At least when it has a chance to stretch its legs on a mostly flat highway cruising at ~65-70mph. This test now makes me wonder:

- How much impact does the AC have on mileage? (Must be a bunch.)
- Does anyone know if the EPA ratings are done with AC or without?
- Are the hills around my home really messing with my mileage? (The hills are aliiiiive with the sound of gaaaaas puuuuumps.)
- Do I live in an area that is nowhere near the conditions of an EPA rating test? (Almost certainly.)
- Do I need to take some occasional long-stretch trips to be sure my RL isn't suffering from short-trip-itis? (Probably, and that's fine with me!)
- Why is the computer reported MPG so inaccurate? (2.5 MPG error on this trip)

I guess the main lesson learned here is that my typical driving conditions must be pretty demanding compared to those used for the EPA ratings. Yet another reason living in Orange County is too damned expensive! But I'm very glad to have finally gotten this test out of the way. It helps me to relax and fully enjoy my sweet new ride.

I'll check in with the service manager at my dealer (Norm Reeves in Irvine, CA) to let her know that things aren't as bad as I'd initially suspected.

BTW, I'll update the original post in this thread to reflect these findings. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the discussion. We can keep it going, if you like, but I think I'm satisfied for now with my RL's performance.

 

[RTP2017]

glad to hear that you got good mileage. Now, take the ski boots off when you drive.

:grin:

You'd think from my previous tanks that I'm normally a lead-foot driver, but I've been trying since I got the RL to keep the instantaneous mileage bars as high as possible while I drive. When the glowing green brackets on my dash fade, I usually try to ease up. So I have to conclude that I must make too many short trips, and that the heat and hills of my local area are really nasty on efficiency.

 

[RTP2017]

Yes and No. It's complicated. :act024:

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fe_test_schedules.shtml

Excellent resource, thanks! Also, it would appear that even my test this morning was likely over-taxing compared to the EPA test, considering I ran at 65-70 mph almost the whole trip. Good to know.