My recent post about attaining 56 MPG in our little VW TDI was a rare achievement, our normal fuel economy is less, but still quite good. A recent road trip to Oregon is more representative of our typical highway fuel economy. The trip consisted of a couple hundred miles of slower, two-lane highways through the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges, then a couple hundred more on the faster I5 freeway. There were few ‘other’ miles mixed in, about thirty. All on one tank of fuel, as traveling 500-600 highway miles on a tank is no challenge for the little 1.9L TDI.
Over 500.3 miles we used 10.5 gallons of diesel, for 47.64 MPG. The pump clicked off a hair under 10.2 gallons, 49 MPG, too high, having made the same trip a few times. We’ll take 47.
We traveled mostly 65-75 mph, with lots of cruise control use.
