Gas gauge ?

[YarisOwnersDad]

Originally Posted by b_hickman11

So you are getting your mpg by dividing your miles from your trip od. by 11?

No, I wasn't talking about figuring MPG. I was talking about estimating how much fuel is left in the tank rather than depending entirely on the gas gauge.

Just for the purpose of demonstration, let's say I get 37 MPG on my Yaris, but to be sure I don't run out of gas, I use 35 MPG for calculating purposes. Also, I assume that I only have ten gallons of gas available to use after a fill-up instead of 11 gallons. This is another way to be conservative in determining how many more miles I can drive before filling up.

OK, 10 gallons of gas times 35 miles per gallon means that I should safely be able to drive 350 miles before filling up again. I reset the trip odometer to 0 at the time I fill up the car, and when I see that I am getting close to 350 miles, I fill up again. In reality I could go further than that, but I am not one to push the limits. I see no point in trying to drain the tank down to fumes before filling up again. I don't want to run out of gas somewhere.

As far as figuring MPG, the only way that I know of to do that is to divide the number of miles driven since the last fill-up by the number of gallons required to fill the tank on the current fill-up. That's what MPG is by definition.

Tom