I was sure someone would've posted this already, but Consumer Reports has named the MINI Cooper among the top 5 most economical cars to own.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Business/P...6965114&page=1

The article doesn't say much about the Cooper, specifically, but it's good to hear nonetheless.

Other cars in the top 5 were the Toyota Prius Touring (overall leader), Volkswagen Rabbit, Honda Civic EX, and Honda Fit.

 

No surprise to me. I'd rate my 2007 MC near the top!!

 

Pretty funny they show a Gen 1 S model.

 

Hmmm.... They must not include post-warranty ownership costs in their metrics...

 

but it's a cabrio... you could still buy that car a month or two ago.

 

Typical of the media getting the details wrong. In any case, yes, Coopers rock and the other models aren't far behind!!!

So what about this.....my manual Cooper (EPA 37 highway) gets over 40 mpg around town!!! In fact, right now the OBC sits at 45.3 in city driving (my city anyway)!!! Now, I understand EPA tests are all done under certain controlled conditions...but I wonder if the other frontrunners in this evaluation have similar results in real-life. Do they do better or worse than the "official" statistics report??

There may be more to this story than the quick and easy report that is featured.

 

didnt even notice,thanks.

 

I guess not. They certainly weren't including the thousands of dollars it will cost to replace the battery in your Prius, either.

 

gokartride,

Do you reset the OBC each time you fill up with gas? If not, you're not getting a current reading (I only mention this because I've seen other posters who never reset it, failing to understand that it then becomes a very long-term average).

Also, try calculating manually...I've always gotten higher readings from the OBC.

 

Yes, I have checked manually, and you are right, it generally comes out 1-2 mpg is lower on a full tank than what the OBC is reading. I often report getting over 40 mpg, but in this case the OBC generally reads 42.5....I try to build in that 2 mpg fudge factor.

I play w/ the OBC all the time. In fact, I reset it every few days, but only so I can see what is happening to better optimize my driving style. When too many days go by the OBC does not update fast enough for me to adjust my driver inputs.

Either way......from my perspective it is reasonable to say the manual Cooper easily capable of 37 mpg city (I get 40 mpg, 42-43 OBC) and 41 mpg highway (I get 44 mpg, 46 OBC). That's still a good bit higher than the EPA #s.

The numbers aren't quite that good running the AC, though, or when I have passengers. Darn passengers.

 

Okay, back from driving to dinner from the train station and home back and forth through Arlington. OBC is now at 45.8 mpg. This car is crazy!!!!!

Side note.....I think I have an explanation for this. Very mild temps here the past few days = less warm up time and therefore less loss of mpgs (which are much lower during engine warm up) that have a big impact on OBC averages. Just a theory.

 

If Toyota and Ford's numbers are to be believed, most hybrid batteries (excepting the early Prii) have outperformed their stated lifetime (see: NYC Ford Escape Hybrids) and only a small percentage have had to be replaced. That's not bad for cars that are getting to be ~5 years old now. We'll check back in another three.

But yeah, I'm hoping that this particular CR tidbit is true! Oliver certainly gets good fuel mileage well, except for when I first started driving him. Learning standard = horrid fuel consumption (11.1L/100km, I think? Worst average every seen on a MC..?). Start, stop. Start, stop. Start--no, wait, stall. Start, stop. Start, stop. Revmatch fail. Revmatch fail. Start, stop. You get the idea.

 

My MPGs are also real good. I've been a bit below the 40s since its been winter and we've had a colder than expected winter. But right now I'm sitting at 38 (OBC)with three bars left. (I too have a 1-2 mpg adjustment to make)I reset every fill up. I also reset average MPH as well so I can roughly correlate average speed and MPG. The better the speed, the less stop and go driving, and the better the MPGs. Once late April gets here and average temps get up it will be above 40 as it was last year. I filled up once last year to drive to my dealer, a 90 mile interstate trip and the OBC was at 48.7 mpg when I arrived. It floored the dealer. Fantastic car.

 

Wow!!!!!

 

Insane milage!

 

The Prius has been sold worldwide since 2001, and almost all of them are still running around on their original batteries, some of which are now eight years old or older. Also, as time passes, the replacement costs for the battery packs has gotten cheaper. I think the replacement cost for a Prius battery is down below $2500, and there's also a market for used batteries taken out of wrecked cars that are going for less than $1000.

 

If I managed to convert that to US mpg right (21.2), I've done worse, but only on the track (15.0mpg, 15.7l/). I'm not the most economical driver, but I've never averaged below 25mpg (9.4l/) on the street.

 

You did the conversion correctly. As a hint, if you go to Google (the actual Google site, not the search bar in your browser), you can do conversions in the search bar.

Put "11.1 liters per 100 km in miles per gallon" in the search bar (without the quotes), and the first search result will be:

"11.1 liters per 100 km = 21.190503 miles per gallon"

The Google calculator has just about any unit of measure you can think of and will convert back and forth between them. An another example, if you search for "60 miles per hour in furlongs per fortnight", it will give you the correct answer (161,280).

 

does it convert beard-seconds?

holy crap... it does!

 

It even works in the search bar in my browser (Safari).

I never had a sense of what l/100km actually meant, as I grew up with mpg (imperial or US), but I think I can get a handle on it as I worked out that 15.3mpg(US) = 15.3l/100km. From there I should be able to work out a reasonable conversion in my head.

(I think the number is 16.8 if you're using imperial gallons.)

 

That's cool - I hadn't tried it in the browser bar in Safari or Firefox recently, but I just confirmed that it works in both.

 

Further hint: no need to type out "litres per 100 km in miles per gallon". Just enter "11.1 l/100 km to mpg" into the search field. Same goes for converting Fahrenheit to Celsius (enter "f to c"), km/h to mph, and more.

 

That's good to know - I generally try to avoid abbreviations like "mpg" because the Google calculator doesn't know all of them, and it's kind of unpredictable as to which ones it will and won't accept.

For example, trying to do "20 mph to fps" doesn't work, because while it knows "mph" is "miles per hour", it doesn't recognize "fps" as "feet per second". But "20 miles per hour to feet per second" works fine.

 

So does "20 mph to ft/s". Occasionally you need to experiment to find what short forms Google understands. The most commonly-used conversions are simple, however.

 

That's much cheaper than I realized. A year or two ago, the cost was $5000-$6000.