As I come up on the one year anniversary of having purchased our 2004 Honda Civic LX Automatic, here is a compile of our fuel economy information.
The 2004 Honda Civic LX advertises fuel economy of 29 mpg (miles per gallon) for city driving and 38 mpg for highway driving. These numbers are generated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and are the result of a set of lab tests. You can find out more about how the tests are conducted by visiting the www.fueleconomy.gov site. Bottom line is that the laboratory tests often do a poor job of simulating real world conditions, as you can see by the following results.
Our Civic is mainly used for commuting to and from work. The commute is mostly 40 mph and every once in a while there is some stop and go traffic. On some weekends we take day trips, and you can see these as spikes in fuel economy where we hit 29+ mpg. We perform regular maintenance on the car, use 87 octane from namebrand gas stations, and run Mobil1 Synthetic Oil in order to make this car last as long as possible.
As you can see, the average mpg over the last year was 26.53 27.32. That’s about 2.5 1.7 mpg lower than the city mpg advertised, and the car is certainly not in stop and go traffic all day. Does this disturb me? Not really, since many cars fall short of their advertised mileage. I know that I have a car that gets some of the best mileage in the non-hybrid class.
Assuming the last gasoline price of $2.70, that yields a fuel cost per mile of $0.10. I’ll save the exercise of calculating true cost per mile for a later day (i.e. include purchase price, maintenance, insurance, etc.).
I generated the following table by always filling up until the pump nozzle clicked. This gives a consistant level for “full” and allows you to calculate mileage for each tank. Note the ever increasing gas prices :)
| Date | Mileage | Gallons | Price per Gallon |
Total Cost | Miles / Gallon |
| 2004-09-05 | 16 | 0 | $0.000 | $0.00 | 0 |
| 2004-09-11 | 302 | 10.144 | $1.999 | $20.28 | 28.19 |
| 2004-09-29 | 553 | 10.595 | $2.079 | $22.03 | 23.69 |
| 2004-10-02 | 839 | 9.33 | $1.999 | $18.65 | 30.65 |
| 2004-10-16 | 1092 | 10.845 | $2.109 | $22.87 | 23.33 |
| 2004-11-01 | 1323 | 10.193 | $2.119 | $21.60 | 22.66 |
| 2004-11-09 | 1545 | 9.17 | $2.119 | $19.43 | 24.21 |
| 2004-11-20 | 1794 | 9.987 | $2.119 | $21.16 | 24.93 |
| 2004-11-28 | 2058 | 10.476 | $2.099 | $21.99 | 25.20 |
| 2004-12-08 | 2313 | 10.745 | $1.989 | $21.37 | 23.73 |
| 2004-12-20 | 2558 | 11.002 | $1.819 | $20.01 | 22.27 |
| 2005-01-06 | 2788 | 9.56 | $1.889 | $18.06 | 24.06 |
| 2005-01-15 | 3023 | 10.046 | $1.979 | $19.88 | 23.39 |
| 2005-01-23 | 3269 | 10.018 | $1.759 | $17.62 | 24.56 |
| 2005-02-03 | 3514 | 10.483 | $1.959 | $20.54 | 23.37 |
| 2005-02-15 | 3755 | 10.929 | $1.989 | $21.74 | 22.05 |
| 2005-02-26 | 4026 | 11.021 | $2.099 | $23.13 | 24.59 |
| 2005-03-11 | 4291 | 10.496 | $2.239 | $23.50 | 25.25 |
| 2005-03-20 | 4559 | 10.951 | $2.219 | $24.30 | 24.47 |
| 2005-03-27 | 4815 | 9.734 | $2.259 | $21.99 | 26.30 |
| 2005-04-03 | 5026 | 7.758 | $2.299 | $17.84 | 27.20 |
| 2005-04-15 | 5332 | 11.085 | $2.469 | $27.37 | 27.60 |
| 2005-04-24 | 5602 | 9.629 | $2.489 | $23.97 | 28.04 |
| 2005-04-30 | 5903 | 10.456 | $2.539 | $26.57 | 28.79 |
| 2005-05-01 | 6150 | 7.152 | $2.499 | $17.87 | 34.54 |
| 2005-05-07 | 6393 | 8.559 | $2.479 | $21.22 | 28.39 |
| 2005-05-13 | 6650 | 8.83 | $2.459 | $21.71 | 29.11 |
| 2005-05-21 | 6947 | 10.301 | $2.459 | $25.33 | 28.83 |
| 2005-06-04 | 7221 | 10.192 | $2.369 | $24.14 | 26.88 |
| 2005-06-25 | 7541 | 10.59 | $2.419 | $25.62 | 30.22 |
| 2005-07-03 | 7824 | 10.173 | $2.369 | $24.10 | 27.82 |
| 2005-07-15 | 8118 | 10.197 | $2.579 | $26.30 | 28.83 |
| 2005-07-24 | 8410 | 10.88 | $2.449 | $26.65 | 28.55 |
| 2005-08-05 | 8703 | 10.261 | $2.569 | $26.36 | 28.55 |
| 2005-08-07 | 9004 | 10.317 | $2.699 | $27.85 | 29.18 |
| 2005-08-12 | 9333 | 10.465 | $2.599 | $27.20 | 31.44 |
| 2005-08-20 | 9617 | 9.513 | $2.759 | $26.25 | 29.85 |
| 2005-08-26 | 9913 | 10.461 | $2.699 | $28.23 | 28.30 |
| 362.28 | $844.73 | 27.32 |
Comments (14)
Linked in one of my articles. Great post.
I believe your overall average is incorrect. You should be calculating total miles/total gallons: (9913-16)/362.28 = 27.32 mpg.
pkthunder,
Thanks for pointing that out. I have corrected the figures. If I want to be really accurate I should be using (9913-302)/(362.28-10.461) = 27.32. :) This accounts for the fact that my initial fill-up gallons were not recorded, and subtracts out the last tank where I have a full tank of gas.
–OL
Wow. Did gas prices really go up that much? I really should pay attention more. Very interesting stuff!
Great post! What meticulous records, I like that with all repairs, etc., but not my gas receipts.
I think you may have missed one fill up between 7/24/05 and 8/7/05…either that or you got 594 miles to the tank of gas you filled up on 7/24/05.
Thanks. Looks like I dropped one row out. Should be fixed now.
Another interesting stat (at least to me) is that you paid right around 8.5 cents per mile for gas.
Whoops. You included a rough version of that stat at the end of your entry. I guess I should read all the way through before commenting.
i am not having honda city but above to buy the same please give me correct milage schedule
What is interesting to note is the increasing gas mileage as you put miles on the car. It looks to me that you are averaging almost 29 mpg after a 5000 mile break-in period.
Mark,
From what I understand I believe that that is correct– after a decent break-in period the mpg improves. In this case though, I think the difference may be slightly exaggerated. During the first 7 months the daily trip was quite short (about 8 minutes). So it just got up to normal operating temperature and then was at the destination. There’s a pretty decent increase in the mpg after the 7 months, once the commute was a bit longer.
–OL
I note also a distinct seasonal variance in fuel consumption. The months of December, January, February and first half of March fall to 22-24MPG. This is to be expected due to the colder weather.
Check your owners manual. I drive the same car, you’re supposed to use 89 octane! :P
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