{"id":944,"date":"2016-11-12T23:48:56","date_gmt":"2016-11-12T23:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/?p=944"},"modified":"2017-02-22T21:57:15","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T21:57:15","slug":"lexus-ct200h-how-the-cold-affects-mpg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/hybrid-ev-vehicles\/lexus-ct200h-how-the-cold-affects-mpg\/","title":{"rendered":"Lexus CT200h: How the cold affects MPG"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have a slight obsession with my MPG and I’ve been tracking it regularly using Fuelly.com<\/a>. What I have noticed is now that the weather is beginning to get cooler the average MPG is getting lower. I expected this would be the case when I got the car so it’s not a shock to me. However since I was tracking the MPG anyway I decided to also track temperature too.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

*Graph updated 22\/02\/2017<\/em><\/p>\n

As you can see clearly, the average temperature (blue) has been dropping as we enter autumn\/winter, and the average MPG (black) has also begun to drop as well.<\/p>\n

So why does this happen? A couple of reasons actually…<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The engine runs less efficiently when cold and it takes longer to heat up, so extended warm-up times means it runs less efficiently and for longer.<\/li>\n
  2. The engine must run even when its not moving the vehicle to generate enough heat for the climate control, so the vehicle occupants can stay warm.<\/li>\n
  3. The hybrid battery is less able to provide power when cold, so it doesn’t help as much.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    However it is surprising that on a short 15mi journeys, which is what 90% of my journeys are to work during the week, that I am still managing over 50mpg. Not bad for a 1.8L petrol! Some diesels would be lucky to see that, and a non-hybrid petrol wouldn’t come close.<\/p>\n

    I’ll continue to log this as we go into winter and it gets colder, and I’ll make a further blog post in the future. I do suspect that I will see a dip below 50mpg at some point when it gets\u00a0colder, but for now it’s still impressive. The Passat, even for a diesel, was lucky to average 46mpg during summer and got even less in winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I have a slight obsession with my MPG and I’ve been tracking it regularly using Fuelly.com. What I have noticed is now that the weather is beginning to get cooler the average MPG is getting lower. I expected this would be the case when I got the car so it’s not a shock to me. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amp_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hybrid-ev-vehicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":975,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944\/revisions\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.andrewwhyman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}