Miles Per Tank?

It's interesting that some of you guys are getting that low of mileage. Obviously I don't have the same car, but I get decent mileage in my MkV GTI 6MT 2.0T FSI. Combined suburb/highway driivng and not babying it all the time I get 26-28 in the warm weather calculating manually. Lately I've been getting 360-400 to a tank (I think Mk6's still have 14.5 gallon tanks). One tank I got 415 miles to and recently, I just had my best tank of 450 miles. This was under the same driving conditions but very warm weather (90's) and I only boosted maybe 5 times the entire tank. It killed me lol.

I rev-match my downshifts all the time and try to coast to stop lights. Now I'm not saying I baby my car, because I don't. I reguarly beat on it and still get over 26 in the warm weather. You'll find cold really kills mileage, but that's any car.

That's using 93 octane with 10% ethanol content. I've heard that aftermarket flashes make the car get better mileage when you're not boosting, so maybe that's it in my case. Either way, I'm not disappointed. It boosts 20+ on a good day and when I want to, I can get really good mileage. That tank of 450 miles ended up being 33.08 mpg calculating manually.

I'm nearing 70k.

I have not reset the trip 2 and it shows 49 hr and 30.x mpg. I can't remember what the Odo says as of today... about 1700 miles...

2010 DSG, 93 octane - I've never gotten more than 32 mpg, but I usually average about 22 mpg city and 30 mpg highway. I've left one of the trip computers on since I bought the car and I'm at 26.8 mpg with quite a bit of spirited city driving. Coming from an 07 Rabbit and then an 09 Volvo C30, I'm pretty happy with the gas mileage.

one thing that annoys me is how fast the gauge seems to go down on the second half of the tank. Is this normal?

For example, doing my super careful, low rev grandma driving I got to about 80 miles on the first 1/8th mark. But by 110 mil I was past the 1/4 mark.

Is this normal? Does the car use gas faster the emptier the tank is?

Again combined city 60, highway 40, 162 miles on 6.5 gallons = 24.9, 93 Octane, DSG and this was conservative/grandma driving. i found the on board mpg display and it had 30.1 for the first display, i am not sure when that was, and 26.4 for the 2nd trip? I know my calculations were less for the first and a little more for the 2nd, so i am not sure what/when that was actually being measured ( i had never seen that display before ).

munkey said:

one thing that annoys me is how fast the gauge seems to go down on the second half of the tank. Is this normal?

For example, doing my super careful, low rev grandma driving I got to about 80 miles on the first 1/8th mark. But by 110 mil I was past the 1/4 mark.

Is this normal? Does the car use gas faster the emptier the tank is?

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this is really normal with any car just how dramatic it tends to be varies. My EVO use to go from full to 1/8 tank in about 50 mi and from 7/8 to 1/2 in about 45. then it was all down hill from there I would get on avg of 180 to 200 mi a tank if I was lucky that was about 50/50 driving. I am going to be stoked when I am able to make a trip across the country I am in on a tank of fuel

RatherBeInCabo said:

This is more like it. I don't believe people exceeding 30mpg on a full tank. Yes, you can do that on the freeway cruising at 65 to 70 on flat ground but not on average.

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Hey I've been a lurker on these boards since getting my MKVI, people who claim to not believe and actually call the people getting 30 plus liars need an attitude adjustment, I have just over 10000 miles on my dsg 2 door and have averaged 29.1. I have also put 500 miles on one tank on a road trip from fla to Louisville, KY. 65 miles per hour avarage with no real stop and go traffic. All my mileage figures come from taking recorded miles and dividing the gallons used. I fill up to the point where with the splash guard in the fuel neck has visable fuel to get the most accurate accounting. I know some people get much less mileage and I don't doubt that each car will have variences but with some intelligent driving you can get exceptional numbers in the gti. Oh by the way on one portion of our road trip we drove the Dragon, I went back and forth about 4 times to the closed section in TN and was getting less than 17 mpg for that portion.:

Carbon Steel said:

Again combined city 60, highway 40, 162 miles on 6.5 gallons = 24.9, 93 Octane, DSG and this was conservative/grandma driving. i found the on board mpg display and it had 30.1 for the first display, i am not sure when that was, and 26.4 for the 2nd trip? I know my calculations were less for the first and a little more for the 2nd, so i am not sure what/when that was actually being measured ( i had never seen that display before ).

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The 2nd display shows your mileage from the last time you manually reset it (hold the 'ok' button). the 1st display resets itself everytime your car is off for more than 2 hours. Given that you hadnt seen the second display that most likely means that you've averaged 26.4 since you got the car.

380 miles on a full tank for me. I drive 88 miles round trip to and from work (Northern state-LIE, southern state pkwy). I currently have Stock software, stageII carbonio and H&R sport springs....

2010 UG said:

The 2nd display shows your mileage from the last time you manually reset it (hold the 'ok' button). the 1st display resets itself everytime your car is off for more than 2 hours. Given that you hadnt seen the second display that most likely means that you've averaged 26.4 since you got the car.

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Thank you, I hadn't seen the first or second display, i knew there had to be a few menus somewhere, so when i found them i ended up resetting both of them. i guess i wouldn't have reset #2 for continuing mpg , but oh well, i will keep that one going in the future.

thanks again.

munkey said:

one thing that annoys me is how fast the gauge seems to go down on the second half of the tank. Is this normal?

For example, doing my super careful, low rev grandma driving I got to about 80 miles on the first 1/8th mark. But by 110 mil I was past the 1/4 mark.

Is this normal? Does the car use gas faster the emptier the tank is?

Click to expand...

My MkV does the same thing. It'll sit on full for a good 70-80 miles and then it really starts going down past the 1/2 tank point. I believe it has to do with the way the tank is shaped and the way the gauge pics it up.

My dad used to have an old 2 door Tahoe. That truck had a 26 gallon tank and it'd literally sit on full for a good 100 miles. Once it was off the fuel mark, it went empty quickly.

Technically the less gas you have, the better the mileage should be. Why? Less weight. It won't be that much better, but every pound makes a difference.


As for this tank, I'm going to get about 375 miles on it. I was going to get about 420 from it according to the MFD, but lets just say I beat the hell out of my car last night cruising with other VW's.:lol:

bigshoulders said:

A great way to get a snapshot of this kind of data is to take a look over at fuelly.com

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Yes I've joined Fuelly and I'm not impressed with the results.

Now it doesn't calculate the mpg correctly. I contacted the admin/mods over a couple of problems and they that replied to some but not the incorrect calculations, its not rocket science to do the calculations. It shows 34.7 mpg average when the lowest as been 38.13 mpg and the highest was 43.27 mpg. I've added you can add 8 mpg on top of this.

Golf GTD (170PS)

OcalaMKVI said:

Hey I've been a lurker on these boards since getting my MKVI, people who claim to not believe and actually call the people getting 30 plus liars need an attitude adjustment, I have just over 10000 miles on my dsg 2 door and have averaged 29.1. I have also put 500 miles on one tank on a road trip from fla to Louisville, KY. 65 miles per hour avarage with no real stop and go traffic. All my mileage figures come from taking recorded miles and dividing the gallons used. I fill up to the point where with the splash guard in the fuel neck has visable fuel to get the most accurate accounting. I know some people get much less mileage and I don't doubt that each car will have variences but with some intelligent driving you can get exceptional numbers in the gti. Oh by the way on one portion of our road trip we drove the Dragon, I went back and forth about 4 times to the closed section in TN and was getting less than 17 mpg for that portion.:

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Somewhat similar experience.

My car with 3300 shows 28.3 on trip 2 which has never been reset. This has steadily risen from the mid-26's since I bought the car. My highest by hand measured mileage is 29.8 for highway (75 or so) and rural driving which was a tank or so ago. If I travel purely on back roads doing 40-50 in 5th or 6th, the trip will show 35+. My by hand measurements are very close to the computer (which says that I'm not in much stop and go traffic and I'm not). When I AX'd the car I managed 5 MPG, incredibly low given my race car gets nearly 9 at full tilt and much higher speed. From that perspective and the testimony above, its evidence that the car is capable of both getting great and poor mileage totally dependent on conditions and driving style.

Rather than think of those getting good to great mileage as being untruthful, I'd suggest that those who arent, make serious effort for just one tank to duplicate our numbers. Take a weekend trip to make a game of it to see just how high you can go. Throw the display on instantaneous mileage and try to drive for a number. I'd love to put a data logger one of each to see just how much throttle/revs and avg speeds compare between those that are getting great mileage and those who are not. Odds are those getting low 20's, outside of urban driving, are purely responsible for it and modding their driving style to do things more smoothly and staying in the power band, below 5K rather than running up to peak revs, likely will allow them to see the kind of numbers we are.

I don't know if you're referring to me, but I never called anyone a liar.

I just expressed my amazement at the disparity people are having with an identical car. I suppose forced induction can do that, where one person is constantly boosting and the other isn't.

At least thats what I'm learning by babying the car on this tank. Basically I am using the car's shift points, which means rarely going over 3k RPM. So far I have 190 mi and haven't hit the halfway mark lol.

So the answer, prematurely, is that YES - it is the driving style that can make the difference of over 100 miles per tank.

The flip side of that is that this has been the most boring week with my car since I got it

One thing I thought of, are people taking into account the car's air conditioning? I guess I didn't focus too much on where people are located, but I wouldn't be surprised if the people in the hotter states are getting a little less mileage from running the A/C all the time.

Also, would people perhaps share their method of breaking in the engine (baby it or drive it hard)? Just wondering if there is any correlation between them.