MPG question?

Andrewf20 wrote: »

That does seem quite low. However, I have heard that small engines are relatively thristy at high speeds, due to short gearing and higher revs, but im not sure to what degree.

The problem these days is that most cars have gotten very heavy, so in the continent where they are not stung by that curse called VRT, they can just go for a larger engine, and in many cases are not offered the teeny weeny engines offered here, or they go for a diesel(and diesels are more advantaegeous the heavier the car is), whereas in Ireland because of VRT we're stuck with cars with under powered and under capacity engines which still sell by the bucket load.

These under capacity engines are not offered in most of Europe(like the BMW 316i which is only on sale in Ireland and Turkey and nowhere else in the world), and therefore the cars are not designed with the small engines fitted to our machines.

What all of this means is that the teeny weeny engines have to be worked hard, and when an engine is being worked hard, it is using a lot of fuel.

A bigger engine or a more powerful engine has more power available so it doesn't need to be worked half as hard, so it actually turns out that cars with larger engines(within in reason, like say a 1.8 vs a 1.6 in say a Vectra) are more efficient in the real world.

Within reason of course, I'm not trying to say that a 4 litre Opel Meriva will use less fuel than a 1.6, but I am trying to say that a 1.6 will be under less stress and not worked as hard as a 1.4, so it should in theory be better on the mpg than a 1.4.

Pete4779 wrote: »

O/T: my car has it in kilometers per litre in the dash, which is perfect as it's a straight comparison - e.g., fill up 60 litres, and I usually do around 10-12km/l.

I don't understand why this system was since replaced with liters/100km, which is nonsense from a practical point of view. Miles per Gallon, then surely Kilometers per litre? We never used gallons per 100 miles!

Kilometres per litre is uesd in Japan, and I think a few other Asian countries.

Miles per gallon is used here, in the UK and the US(though our gallons and US gallons are different). Everywhere else its litres per 100 km.

Car makers always quote fuel consumption in mpg and l/100km, never km/l.

I don't know what either l/100 km or km/l is,so its mpg for me! I tried to convert from mpg to l/100 km before, but it is simply too awkward, and there is no point in converting to km/l when nobody uses it in Europe.

It would be completely pointless using a system that is not used by anyone in Europe i.e km/l. I very much doubt it that many would use l/100km here either,even cars in km's, though now that cars are in kms for almost 3 years, its inevitable that some people will change over, and we all will eventually.

As for working out mpg in a car with the odometer in km, thats what the trip computer is for, as practically every trip computer equipped car in km can show fuel consumption in mpg.
All the German and Japanese makes can do it anyway.