Hi all, Last weekend the new car had its first road trip: slightly more than 1000km of driving, mostly on the highway but some dirt roads thrown in for good measure. With three adults and a toddler on board, plus luggage, the car was near capacity. Still comfy though. I aimed to spend as little time on the road as possible so the child didn't have to be cooped up in his car seat unnecessarily. Therefore, we set the cruise control for 125km/h (78mph) where permissible, figuring that actual speed would be a bit lower. Average speed for the outbound trip (~450km) was 111km/h (69mph) and the car claims that it achieved 4.1l/100km (57mpgUS) for that segment. I haven't verified the accuracy of speedometer or fuel consumption display yet. Sixth gear is awesome in this car. At 125km/h it's doing about 2200rpm, and sixth is useful down to about 70-80km/h (even on some pretty steep hills). With the dirt driving and the trip back, average FE for the whole trip was 4.4l/100km (53mpgUS). -Simon
At 100kph I'd say minimum of 65 mpg to even 70 plus mpg at 55 mph. Well if Volvo had offered a car with this kind of fuel mileage here in the U.S. back in 2009 I would driving a Volvo as my daily driver instead of a Toyota Prius.
Hi all, George - yes (according to the Wikipedia anyway), the engine is the 1.6 Duratorq. Supposedly it gets 76mpgUS on the NEDC highway cycle, so 70-80mpg should be achievable if it's driven slowly in good conditions. Next time we hit the highway maybe I'll zero the trip meter and try to get some representative FE numbers at various speeds. Might take a while on that though. -Simon
Rumor is the V40 will make it to the US in the next couple of years, but I wouldn't hold your breath for the diesel. Hard to say what they would install in it for this market, though. Maybe a "T4" version of the new DriveE architecture? The the new T5 (245hp) would be ludicrous in a car that size.
