2005 Scion tC – Actual Gas Mileage Data/Analysis
2005 Scion tC by (UB) Sean R
I drive a 2005 Automatic Scion tC(review). Being my first car, I was interested in keeping diligent records of my gas consumption and as such maintained a log of my gas re-fills for over 2 years now. I recently looked at the data to discover some interesting results.
Methodology
I’ve blogged about my system for collecting this data in a post titled “How to use Google Docs to track your gas milage“.
Driving Profile
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and mostly use my car for a short (~5 mile) commute to work. In general this commute involves more time (not distance) spent on local roads than on the highway. But, the distance generally ends up being equally split among highway and local roads.
On weekends this profile changes with more highway use as I explore the marvels of the area. I highly recommend the 71 miles website if you happen to be in the area and are looking for places to explore.
Expected Results
According to the EPA this car is rated for 19mpg local and 27mpg highway [Automatic Transmission].
Results
Having saved my data on Google Documents, I created the following chart gadget to visually share my data:
As you can see, the car has in general provided pretty consistent mileage with a low standard deviation about the average. The results graphed in the chart above can be summarized as follows:
Thus, my average mileage falls squarely in the middle of the EPA estimates.
Note: The graph and table above are dynamic and pull data from my source spreadsheet. As such, they will continue to reflect the latest results as I continue to keep track of my gas consumption.
Observations
If you examine the graph, you will notice a few hills and some valleys as well. Reflecting back, I was able to associate the hills with long road trips I took to destinations like Sonoma, Napa Valley and Monterey. The driving conditions for these trips would be almost exclusively highway and as a result I was hitting values consistent with the EPA estimate for highway mileage.
Conversely, looking at the valleys in the graph, I was able to associate them with periods of time where work was especially hectic and resulted in my driving habits sticking almost exclusively to the work commute. Which approximately tallies with the EPA estimate for city mileage.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it appears that the EPA estimates for this car are pretty accurate qualitatively. However, based on my data I would venture to guess that they are somewhat conservative. Furthermore, for a sporty car as the tC the mileage results are surprisingly good.
How does this affect my gas costs? Well, look out for a future posting which will cover gas costs and what I do to reduce my costs.
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