![]() 04/10/2020 at 18:15 • Filed to: Ford Fiesta, Hertz, Lies, MPG | ![]() | ![]() |
I had one of Mr Hertz’ Fiestas for a month.
This is what the trip computer said when I handed it back.
Fuel consumption averaged 5.8 l/100 km or 48.7 mpg (Imp) or 40.5 mpg (US). Reasonably good bearing in mind this included many short journeys.
But is it true? These devices notoriously tell fibs.
I got the car full, handed it back full and bought 61.2 l. I drove 982 km so a bit of arithmetic tells me I actually did 6.2 l/100 km (45.6 mpg Imp or 37.9 mpg US). Quite the difference then. So, trip computer speak with forked tongue. Who’d have thought?
In case you’re wondering, those 61.2 litres cost me €80. No cheap fuel here despite the price of crude falling dramatically.
![]() 04/10/2020 at 18:40 |
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I really don't trust them, but why would they be so inaccurate?
![]() 04/10/2020 at 18:48 |
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To make the car look better than it is.
![]() 04/10/2020 at 18:53 |
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Sounds like a big fat lawsuit waiting to happen. I guess the argument to that is that the tolerances for accura cy are unrealistically large and the computer state s the best possibility. Now I trust my computer even less than I already did. The mpg average counted idling as 0 mpg so the average is way lower than it should be.
![]() 04/10/2020 at 19:06 |
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Do you know far a fact it was full when you got it? Most cars will drive a reasonable distance before the fuel gauge moves, and people returning rental cars - and no doubt rental car companies themselves - have been known to take advantage of that. Don’t know if one of these would do the 70km or s o it’d take to get it back to correct, but it’s not totally impossible - my Golf certainly would have.
![]() 04/10/2020 at 19:51 |
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3mpg is nothing to worry about
![]() 04/11/2020 at 07:23 |
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True, but when I
got the car th
e
range was quoted as something like 650 km with a worse fuel consumption figure than I
achieved - which would suggest it may have been fuller than I
left it and would make the figures worse.