Why is your MPGcs lower the higher EV% you drive on Voltstats?

[MrEnergyCzar]

I noticed my MPGcs is only 26 on voltstats with 92% EV driving. I noticed the super mileage 99% EV people have even worse MPGcs while the people who drive the least in EV mode have the best MPGcs. Is this because my engine comes on for only very brief moments thus it's not warmed up and the people who drive a lot have the engine run for longer periods thus the engine gets warmed up?

Thanks,
MrEnergyCzar

[saghost]

That'd be my guess, yes. Certainly the Volt (like any other car) gets much worse mileage before it warms up. If the only miles it ever sees are EMM and ERDTLT, it'd have pretty bad mileage - whereas it's not hard to get better than 40 mpg on the highway after it warms up once it breaks in...

[volt3939]

That'd be my guess, yes. Certainly the Volt (like any other car) gets much worse mileage before it warms up. If the only miles it ever sees are EMM and ERDTLT, it'd have pretty bad mileage - whereas it's not hard to get better than 40 mpg on the highway after it warms up once it breaks in...

Yep, EMM and very few CS miles means I'm #1106 out of 1130 in CS mileage. My wife complained the the car smelled of gas after the last EMM occurrence , dealer ran it a bunch without driving it, but said it was just paint burning off the exhaust. I did notice that once, right after the one trip last year when we put 10 miles on it. The reported gas usage for that trip was 0.25 gallons, so highway 40MPG!

(I would not call it broken in yet, total ICE miles is <39.)

VoltStats says 14.58 MPGcs, which includes at least 4 EMM episodes, the body shop running the ICE for some reason, and the dealer running it for the "gas smell" complaint.

[KyleH]

I would also guess that fuel conditioning may be hurting your stats. I don't know exactly what it does, but I wonder if it is burning it off or actually using the electricity for that period of time.

In my case, I have about 43 in MPGcs. That is almost dead on with the dash display that showed up 41.5mpg for a single 800 mile trip that I did. I suspect the 1.5 difference was my A/C running. Otherwise, there is some odd inconsistency and I don't know exactly what MPGcs really mean.

On the other hand, how are people getting higher than 50-60 MPGcs? or the crazy 100+ MPGcs? Could it be Mountain Mode going downhill / down-a-mountain?

-KyleH

[volt3939]

Have yet to run into fuel conditioning. The dealer also put a couple of gallons in when they did the side pole enhancements, so that probably delayed it a while, so I'm starting my second year without having to buy any gas for the Volt.

I have noticed a few inconsistencies in the reported gas usage. The A trip odometer reported 5 miles and 0.5 gallons used on delivery, the B odo said 4 miles and 0 gallons used. The difference is down to 0.2 gallons now, neither have been reset.

I think the MPGcs leader now will not be soon 103MPGcs is from only 3 days of data...

[Jim Fallston Md.]

I have not used much gas all at once before last week and my MPGcs was around 21 then. Last week I drove about 100 miles on gas and the dash display said in we were getting in the 42 mpg range. Looking at my Volt stats my MPGcs only went up to around 29 , So it has to be some sort of averaging process that takes place in the computer for determining the MPGcs that is compiled. At least that is the way it feels to me.

[ghostgs1]

I've noticed my cs numbers change (usually down) even though I haven't used any gas at the time. I don't place too much stock in what the numbers say, as someone once said "liars figure and figures lie". The only real numbers I believe are the number of miles driven over a longer period of time and the cost for all energy consumed. The Volt is cheap to drive. Ray

[MDDave]

I've kept a close eye on my CS mileage and I am pretty sure that Voltstats is under reporting my MPGcs by a mile or more. For example, I've noticed times where I beat my average by several MPG and my Voltstats number will actually go down. Other times I don't use any gas for a couple of weeks and my number fluctuates by a couple tenths mile over that time.

[emartin00]

I have noticed that my CS mileage slowly creeps downward when I haven't used gas in a month. They do not actually get a MPG figure from the car, they use the total mileage-EV miles for CS miles. Then use some figure to get the gallons burned. If I download the history, my gallons burned figure goes up and down constantly.