Does anyone else fill that their estimated miles till empty is never accurate or reliable??? Mine seems to change dramatically all the time! My wife 2011 ford fusion seems to be dead on and always accurate and reliable. I hate how mine will drop 10 miles within a mile then drop more within almother mile the go back up 10 miles. In just fluctuates too much and too often. Anyone else feel this way? Any fix???

 

Mine fluctuates too but depends on how i'm driving. It's based on whether your in stop and go driving or hitting a bunch of stoplights where your always accelerating instead of just cruising. But if you're worried about ur distance to empty....get gas sooner! haha

 

The mpg computer is sensitive , when i fill up i get a normal reading when i hit the gas it goes up and down accordingly , ur good no need to worry

 

for the first year I calculated every tank of gas and I got almost exactly the avg. mpg the car showed. I felt the DTE was very accurate. Still do... I avg 19-20mpg

 

Haha. But there's no way to make it a smoother process? My wife drives in dense traffic like me and hers doesnt jump around like mine. Granted hers gets much better mpg but still the unreliablility. Ahhh

 

I haven't noticed much fluctuation in mine. I'll have to check and see. Glad to hear the MPG calculator is right. My 09 F150 was at least 2-3 mpg off every tank. And when the milage is around 13 thats a big variance.

 

Correct: it's based on the individual driving habits. When I used to drive 100 miles to work, my full-tank DTE was a little over 500. Now that my daily work commute is less than 5 miles, my full-tank DTE is about 340. My driving habits changed and the Max knows it.

 

Mine is pretty accurate also. For the last 16809 miles I used 694.589 gallons for a mpg of 24.2. The in car calculation averaged 25.00 mph. Close enough for me. The in car reading fluctuates somewhat, with the highest error around +2.5 mpg for one tank but overall it averages out ok.

 

agreed! I manage my fuel mileage with an app on my Ipad and the car is consistently very close to the actual. Over the last year, I have averaged 20.9 MPG in 99% suburban driving and mixed traffic, stop lights, etc. My car almost always displays an avg MPG of 21.1 which is damn close.

 

Yours is more accurate, if hers doesn't fluctuate on driving habits!

 

I tested mine last night & it literally went from 18 miles left to "---" miles left?

 

mine I feel is correct and pretty on I fill up every two weeks. Usually get like 350 miles a tank at least

 

I rarely use the DTE. When I get to a quarter tank, I fill it up.

 

Which is easily the wisest thing to do. Those running their tank below a quarter full are either neophyte drivers, or have been very lucky. About once every few years I list the disasters that can befall a driver who lets his fuel tank run low. I did that somewhere here last month, but don't remember the thread. Believe me, the list of potential problems is long indeed. Wise drivers never let their tank drop below the quarter full mark.

As to the fluctuations in distance to empty, that is tied to the particular driving situations you have been in in the last few minutes of driving. The computer has no way of knowing whether you will continue to move slowly in heavy stop-and-go traffic, or find an open stretch where you can cruise at speed.

Also, the shape of the fuel tank and the jerkiness of driving affect where the level of the fuel sloshing around might come up to on the device measuring fuel depth. Ford has chosen to use a slower-reacting system, which is technically less accurate, but actually works well, and seems smoother and more pleasing to the driver.

 

Same here. Never push the SV beyond 400 miles which approximates 5 day work commute plus local errands for my GF.
Found the MPG calculator pretty accurate and get 23 mpg in mostly highway driving.

 

I haven't noticed much fluctuation on my 3 week old Max. Maybe 2-5 mpg but it's only when my driving behavior has obviously changed. I've had many vehicles with these gauges and I'd say the Max's falls right in the middle on how it fucntions.

The worst was a 2012 Civic, I could be driving on the hwy for 20 minutes and then all of the sudden it would jump the distance to empty range 50 miles. No gradual change at all. I swear there was nothing good about that car.

On my 2010 Lexus the gauge did not like to raise the distance to empty number at all unless you filled up the tank or have been driving on a stretch of hwy for a good while.

Shockingly I would say the best/most accurate gauge was on my old '96 Grand Cherokee.

 

It's a scare tactic. How far are you willing to drive if you don't know how much gas is left?

I've pretty much been dialed in to mine. Even if it shows "---" for DTE, I know my driving habits and can pretty much gauge how far I can go even though it doesn't tell me. Every time I fill up I reset my trip odometer so I can see how my mileage is for each tank.

If I know I'm probably going to squeeze out 400-420 miles from a 20-gallon tank, I don't worry about the DTE.

 

Its based on how your drive. That's all you have to know about it. Never rely on technology just do the math in your head. If our car holds 20 gallons and you do roughly 20 miles a gallon = 400. See, simple math . I do like it when you gun it, it goes down like what 2-5Miles each time real quick. That's whats pretty awesome about it!

 

it is confusing b/c Mine will say 43 miles left and i fill up and only get 16.5 gallons....

 

Yep. That is exactly how Nissan designed this, and they have good reasons for doing so..

We do not want the level of gas in the tank to drop below the fuel pump casing, as the pump (near the bottom of the fuel tank) counts on being submerged in fuel to prevent overheating. And we absolutely do not want to risk running out of fuel, as that might require replacing the catalytic converter at a cost of between $399 and $900, depending on where we get it done.

The days of running the tank down to the last gallon or two are gone, and there are dozens of reasons why that has been a very bad practice from the Barney Olds days over a hundred years ago. I have posted here many times of the heartache I have experienced from the late 1940s through the 1980s by letting my tank get down to the last few gallons before filling up.

For the last twenty years, I have kept at least a quarter tank of fuel in my car at all times. After hearing of my many unpleasant experiences, my wife, children and grandchildren never let their tanks get below the one quarter full mark either. Just asking for trouble in so many ways.