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How much does temperature effect mileage?

I ask because my average mpg has been dropping significantly lately and so has the temperature. Granted, some of the reason is sitting is slow traffic during snow storms but wow, my last tank was 21% below my average!

Any thoughts?

Welecome to CleanMPG!

My experience is a 15% drop from 80F to 25F - more if ice or snow is on the roads.

It's not uncommon for 20% temperature hits. There are some things you can do to lessen it though. An example is a grill block for your car.

It depends on where you are, but in RI I would think around 20% is about right. I experienced about 25% in ND, and about 10% here in MO.

Okay guys, want to see what really short trips in this stuff will do to mileage?

-15F (-33F windchill), 9mph head/crosswind from the WSW, sunny:


43.2mpg for 3.1mi (Work to lunch with friends)

-8F (-25F windchill), 9mph head/crosswind from the W, sunny:


47.0mpg for 3.6mi (Lunch to work)


I didn't even want to see what that did to my day average and all these 12V powered starts are having an impact on my tiny battery. Keep in mind that this is a healthy battery -- it drops down to 10.5V as it is finishing cranking. :eek:

The cold sucks for cars.

Compare that to his 91 mpg lifetime average and 115 mpg best tank, with single trips up into the 140's mpg.

Hi RImazda3

Temperature has a huge impact on MPG. As the others have said there are things that you can do to mitigate the cold, but you will never get it all back. This is a great place to learn how to get better MPG's with any car, so dive in, get acquainted and start hypermiling.

I recommend msantos' article "Winter Survival Guide..." even though it is for hybrids. Most of it still pertains, just ignore the hybrid specific sections and maybe scale back the grill blocking percentages since your engine runs continuously.

But yes, winter stinks for fuel economy.

I agree with Mike, Jud, Andrew and others.

It totally depends on the actual ambient temperature and the distances driven. In my particular case the MPG drop reaches and even exceeds 50%.
Hardly a morale booster, but anything we do to mitigate that MPG drop helps a lot otherwise it would have to be officially termed as "Pure FE Hell". ;)


Cheers;

MSantos

It's been about 25-30% for me, but then again my situation has changed quite a bit, so has my route.I don't have a grill block but will soon. As you can see my "wintervenge" started recording in december. My lowpoint was a 20mpg tank. This was my car with bad wheel bearings, in need of an alignment, no grill block and no FAS, also bumper to bumper traffic and 2mph sectors.