30 mpg = reasonable?

My wife consistently gets in the 30 - 34 mpg range on her 03 01m wagon. She drives 90% city and is a pretty conservative driver. She considers a 400 mile tank an accomplishment. Both our cars have a ventectomy.

The car has plenty of power and I keep it well-maintained. No CELs. About 20k on the fuel filter, so it's due.

Does her mpg sound reasonable considering these details? It seems low to me.

mathanz said:

My wife consistently gets in the 30 - 34 mpg range on her 03 01m wagon. She drives 90% city and is a pretty conservative driver. She considers a 400 mile tank an accomplishment. Both our cars have a ventectomy.
The car has plenty of power and I keep it well-maintained. No CELs. About 20k on the fuel filter, so it's due.
Does her mpg sound reasonable considering these details? It seems low to me.

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I had an '03 with the automatic, and couldn't seem to get more than 36mpg on the highway. The engine ran great, but the torque converter just robs efficiency. My opinion...better than 30 mpg is OK for an automatic.

Thanks for the response. Just read your 03 resurrection thread. How's your mileage on that 11mm 5 sp wagon?

Typically over 500 mile tanks so far on the ALH wagon. 40-42 mpg. That's city with maybe 5% aggressive driving in bad traffic, or when I am in a hurry. Probably not ideal tires for top mpg...It will be a few months before I can get some long highway mileage. Can't wait.

I got a little over 26 MPG on two long road trips pulling a popup camper with my 84 Vanagon (2014 and 2016). It has an ALH engine from a 2002 Jetta! Without the popup camper, it normally gets 32 to 34 mpg from tank to tank with mixed driving and up to 36 mpg on the road!

,,,, not bad for a brick that's low-geared!

Thanks AndyBees. We're all jealous of that low-geared brick btw!

DubStrom thanks for your reply too. My wife is not a big fan of her wagon, but it's paid for and she's agreed to drive it until we can afford something newer and bigger for her and the kids. Eventually it'll get passed to me and it'll get the three pedal mod.

Sounds about right to me if it rarely gets out on the highway for any stretch of time. Hard to really hypermile the automatics around town like you can with a manual.

Driving habits are also much more variable (and often detrimental) to fuel economy in the city. I see people speeding up to red lights and laying on the brakes all the time. Which is obviously not good.

Right Track

I just got an OBD driving habits monitor from my insuarance company plugged in there this week, so if I accelerate "too fast", or brake "too fast" I'll get nicked. A full 90 days this time. I guess i will be hypermiling for a few months.

So far, no incidents and I still have the maximum discount (24% I think). Odd that avoiding an accident, or responding to someone pulling out in front of you by stomping the brakes is penalized. I know that they want to encourage you to stay farther back so you have plenty of time to stop. But in reality, it just encourages people to pull in front of you!

And I've been honked at many times for not accelerating fast enough!

Yeah, I suppose this is reasonable. I took it for a 30-mile spin yesterday to get a feel for it and it seemed a bit sluggish compared to my 5 sp. with twice the miles. Also, I couldn't hear the turbo like I can on mine, but mine does have a broken flexpipe which means I can really hear my turbo. No CEL, so I'm assuming her turbo is fine and the sluggish feel is what a 90 hp motor coupled with an 01m feels like. No real problem getting up to highway speeds and when floored it could get between 3-4K RPM before shifting.

dubStrom I've thought about using the OBD from my insurer, but my local State Farm rep talked me out of it because of her discomfort with it. Maybe I'll look into it again once we're out of this poorly-planned urban area with its congested roads.

dubStrom said:

I had an '03 with the automatic, and couldn't seem to get more than 36mpg on the highway. The engine ran great, but the torque converter just robs efficiency. My opinion...better than 30 mpg is OK for an automatic.

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You don't have a 5th gear so that's much of the lower mpg on the highway.

jokila said:

You don't have a 5th gear so that's much of the lower mpg on the highway.

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More like a lack of 1st gear, as the total final drive is not all that much different. I forget exactly, but it is only a couple hundred RPMs 5th gear on the 02J vs. 4th gear + lockup on the 01M.

It is the around town part, where the converter is unlocking quite a bit, that makes the biggest difference. Which is why DSG type automatics are so much less of a hit. Or, even torque converter type automatics with some snazzy programming like Mazda's Skyactiv versions or the G-tronic 7sp in my Sprinter.

My 2010 JSW (DSG) behaved very differently than the DSG in my new 2015 GSW. 2015 pulls more, and DSG clutches seem to engage incompletely when stopped with brake on. It also revs when I lift my foot off the brake... 2010 did not do this at all-the 2010 DSG began clutch disengage-even with no throttle, no rev, AND shifted sooner, more deliberately upon acceleration. The 2015 GSW revs higher before shifting, and seems to pull even when stopped with brakes on (as if there was a torque converter). I think it is not going to be as efficient.

GSW setup has the paddle shifters, which give you a little more control, but in automatic mode, it is slow to upshift compared to the 2010. Need to lean on the paddles to get it to upshift earlier. Won't make a difference on the highway, but I think city driving will take an MPG hit. Maybe closer to OP (Mathans) experience with 01m ALH, at least in the city.

The 2015 DSG feels softer on the transition from stop to start, potentially wasting more energy and possibly wearing out the DSG clutches more quickly? I did not anticipate this difference, but city driving doesn't seem to be smart, efficient on the new DSG tune.

Just filled the 2015/DSG up- 36 miles per gallon. I drove this tank harder than usual (break in). It has 1081 miles on the odometer!

mathanz said:

dubStrom I've thought about using the OBD from my insurer, but my local State Farm rep talked me out of it because of her discomfort with it. Maybe I'll look into it again once we're out of this poorly-planned urban area with its congested roads.

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"zero incidents" and no nighttime driving penalties yet. Sitting at 27% discount on the truck, which gets little use (probably why the discount is higher). That should hold. 22% discount on both the ALH wagon and 2015 Golf Wagon, both with ~180 miles. Also no "incidents". And I've been in rush hour traffic and congested highways, with a few honks

I hope I can keep this up. I could use a couple hundred back! And it is clearly helping to keep the mpg up. I never really considered that the OBD driving habits monitor could improve my fuel economy!

Driving Monitor, RESULTS

dubStrom said:

I just got an OBD driving habits monitor from my insuarance company plugged in there this week, so if I accelerate "too fast", or brake "too fast" I'll get nicked. A full 90 days this time. I guess I will be hypermiling for a few months.

So far, no incidents and I still have the maximum discount (24% I think). Odd that avoiding an accident, or responding to someone pulling out in front of you by stomping the brakes is penalized. I know that they want to encourage you to stay farther back so you have plenty of time to stop. But in reality, it just encourages people to pull in front of you!

And I've been honked at many times for not accelerating fast enough!

Click to expand...

I managed to get through the monitoring period with a NICE discount-22% (off the annual premium).
It's just a couple hundred dollars but I'll take it!

I can finally cram the brakes again without fear of generating a "hard braking" incident!!

Crazy, being penalized for hitting the brakes. I had a few hard braking events-4 all together (two on the truck, two on the 03 wagon, and one excessive acceleration event, in the GSW).

These care are really highway cars. In my 02m (6spd) Golf I can be driving down the freeway knowing that there's almost no other vehicle around getting the MPG that I'm getting. In any of my manual trans cars when I hit the city I can watch the MPG plummet. I run UltraGauge on two of my cars (kids have them in their cars): I'm on backorder for one for my blue Golf (6spd). If I were doing city driving I'd be running a hybrid or an EV: right tool for the job; my toolset is currently only ALHs as my miles are almost all highway (all three of my Golfs are averaging over 50 mpg).

I'll have to state that the 01m cars aren't necessarily pigs. Had the daughter's car tuned (Stage 1) and with injectors/nozzles out of a manual trans car and that thing pulls extremely hard: had her "race" her brother in his Stage 3 5spd from a light and her wagon actually out-pulled his Golf- no real lag from shifting. Of course, he said that he really was on the throttle, but I don't now whether he was serious: but on the other hand I doubt that he'd want to concede to his sister! No idea what FE the wagon is getting: it's up in Canada where they use funny numbers (UltraGauge is mainly mean as a service tool for me- I'm notified whenever any codes pop up)

above 40mpg city in the 03 ALH wagon 5MT

OK, the short block and 5sp manual transmission is from a Golf, same year, with about 190k behind it.

But now I see I can pretty easily push into the 40s in the city (some "beltway" driving). Last tank would have made 600 but I tanked up at 1/8th. Calculated over 44mpg. Hard to complain about that, especially with the slightly heavier tires and 16" wheels.

The '15 GSW is a totally different animal. Once in a while it hits a groove where it holds 60 or 65 on a moderate hill while maintaining 48mpg like my '14 JSW did. But the second you press down, even a little, PLUNGES into low thirties on the hills (yes, I am talking about the instantaneous readout). I need a tune to help with torque on hills. I think it will maintain better mpg under those conditions.

I'm beginning to think I probably drive more efficiently than I realize, since I get pretty good FE in stop and go driving in my Wagon. I've been visiting repair shops lately at least one morning a week, which means driving a couple miles, stopping, re-starting, and doing it again for a couple hours. And we have a lot of traffic going to Cape Cod many evenings for my commute home. Despite this (and running A/C all the time) I'm seeing 46-48 MPG pretty consistently. If I took a highway trip at 75 MPH with the A/C on I'd probably see 52. 10% isn't that big a penalty.

I love using the Wagon for the real short trip driving just because it doesn't take a big MPG hit. My GSW would lose more. And the BMW? Yikes.

Given its wife driven and auto.. I'd be worried that your intake is clogged really bad!

^^^ Yeah. Got my car (2014) with 118k miles on it and the intake was clogged pretty bad. PO (of 12 years) was a woman.