I do most of my driving in a city.
On average, How many miles per gallon does your pilot 2017 ran.
Mine is 10.5mpg for 7,700 miles.
Unless someone drives the same route you do what they get for MPG is meaningless. You need to look at what your vehicle is rated for city and highway to see if you are close. Have you ever checked your MPG on a highway trip at a reasonable speed.
Check out fuelly.com and fueleconomy.gov. But 10.5 is low, I’d expect 14-18 mpg in town. We need to know what your drives are like-hilly? Short? Heavy traffic? Heavy foot?
Just for fun I looked at Fuelly web site where people post their MPG results for a 2017 Pilot. There where several in the 11 to 13 miles per gallon range . Most where getting in the high teens or low 20’s. One person claimed 72.02 MPG .me thinks that is wrong .
Consumer Reports got 20 MPG with an EX-L with the 3.5L V6 and the standard 6-speed automatic. That is based on a mix of driving circumstances. Your MPG is on the low end of the expected range. Lots of stop and go, accelerate strongly and brake firmly? That’ll do it.
Do you keep your tires properly inflated? That can make a minor difference.
If you took 10 drivers and had them drive the same route in a city with the same car, you would get lots of variation in MPG. It really depends on driving style.
Do you tailgate? do you ride the brakes? do you drive up to a red light before braking? All of those can drastically reduce MPG.
The EPA City mileage is 18 to 20 mpg, depending on the transmission and whether it is FWD or AWD. The new generation started in 2016, and looking at earlier Pilots adds another variable that might confuse the issue.
The EPA City mileage gives an indication of what mileage you might get if your drive mirrors the one that the EPA uses. Your mileage could be much worse if you are driving in heavy city traffic and do not drive very far before you are stopped. I drive a 2017 Accord with the 4-cyl engine and a CVT transmission. This morning, I got about 43 mpg overall in mostly highway driving with no stops along the way. At the start of the drive, I got about 10 mpg until the car warmed up and I go to out of the neighborhood. Even a car with outstanding gas mileage can get very low mileage in certain situations.
We have a 2016 Honda CR-V with a 2.4 liter engine and automatic. In our very congested city driving (it’s about 5 miles to our daughter’s house, takes 20 minutes on a good day, 45 on a bad day, seems like 30 stops along the way for lights, signs and traffic, rarely go faster than 30) we get in the mid teens. Maybe.
On a long highway trip of hundreds of miles, mostly at freeway speeds of 75 give or take we might get 28 mpg.
A 2017 could be almost 2 years old, so maybe 4000 miles a year. If you drive a short congested route, that could be normal gas mileage.About $25 a week for gas. Depreciation is costing you much, much more.
The payback time on selling this and getting a Hybrid would be…never.
I’m surprised no one has asked how you came up with your gas mileage. Some people simply don’t know how to collect the data and calculate it manually. This is the best method. I have found that my gas mileage monitor is pretty accurate.
10.5 seems really low. However, driving style has so much to do with mileage. For fun, I’ve kept my instantaneous gas mileage reading up for the last couple of months just to see what helps and hurts gas mileage. I’ve noticed idling or accelerating quickly or hills all really hurt - like in the single digits kind of hurt. And unless I can coast a long way down a hill, there’s very little I can do to get it significantly above average.
I have had 8 or 9 Acura’s with the same 3.5L engine.They got the EPA city milage AFTER a few thousand miles. All of my late model (2003 and up ) Hondas and Acuras got improved milage after a few thousand miles; perhaps partiall due to adaptive transmissions adapting.
+1
And, it is important to note that bad driving habits are so ingrained with a lot of people that they don’t realize they are tailgating and/or riding the brakes and/or using the gas and brake as full-on/full-off switches, or are just heavy on the gas pedal.
I know one woman who tailgates so badly that I refuse to ride with her any longer. When I attempted to–diplomatically–suggest that she leave more space between her car and the one in front, she immediately shouted, “I’m NOT tailgating”. Needless to say, she gets lousy gas mileage and has been in numerous fender-benders–but still refuses to acknowledge that she tailgates.
A co-worker got a new Volvo, and I happened to be driving in back of her on the way to work. When we parked, I suggested that she go back to the dealership as a result of a defective brake light switch that was causing her brake lights to flash on intermittently. It turned-out–after her husband did a ride-along with her–that she was constantly hitting the brake–even on upgrades.
A friend of mine slams his brakes on at the last minute as he approaches red lights, and does not understand why I begin to coast when I see a light turn red ahead.
All of this is unconscious behavior, and all of this inevitably leads to bad gas mileage.
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Although bad driving habits are responsible for a lot of bad gas mileage, sometimes simply having to idle for a long time can do it. I can’t imagine how bad mileage police cars or delivery vehicles get. Or parents who have to wait in the carpool line to pick up kids for 30 minutes every school day. Or someone commuting home everyday who routinely gets stuck in traffic. I’ve never seen the driving pattern used to determine the EPA estimates. I would guess the city numbers are from commuting, but not with lots of idling and not stuck at 5 red lights in a row and the like.