We recently received an email from a new Tundra owner who wasn’t getting the mileage stated on the sticker. Basically, this person said that “I drive mostly on the highway, but I’m not getting the 18 mpg listed on the sticker. Instead, I’m getting about 15.5 mpg.”
We haven’t heard back from this person yet, but we sent them an email with the following ideas. We figured it might be useful to someone else so we copied it here…
1) Calculate the mileage manually — sometimes the automatic system is inaccurate. We’ve found that minutes spent idling at the dealership (before you owned it) will throw the computer-calculated mileage off substantially, especially for the first few tanks of gas.
2) New engines need at least 1k miles to break-in properly, but it may take as much as 5k miles before you get the best mileage.
3) Have you added any aftermarket wheels or tires, or maybe a camper or other high profile item to your truck? Any of these things could be hurting your mileage. Surprisingly, even a set of tires can drop 1 or 2 mpg if they have aggressive tread.
4) The engine control module (ECM) adapts to the driver’s style to provide the best performance and fuel economy. If you have another driver in the family, their style could be drastically different. Even if this other driver isn’t “hot rodding” the truck, the drastic difference can trick the ECM to switch into “programming” mode every time you switch drivers. I can’t imagine this would result in such a big difference between EPA and actual, but it is possible.
5) How much of your driving is on the highway? Even if you drive 90% of the time on the highway, the other 10% of the time you drive in the city can lower your overall mileage as much as 1 mpg.
6) Finally, if none of the above seem plausible, your truck may be one of a few Tundras that simply doesn’t achieve the stated mileage. Just like some trucks do better than the sticker, some trucks do worse. Your dealer can try to fix this be re-flashing the ECM, or maybe updating the truck’s software. Either of these will fix the problem.
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I bought a new tundra in Alberta, Canada.
After several tanks I figured out that the computer derived calculation from liters/ 100 km to mpg is based on US gallons. Canadian(imperial gallons are larger) There are 3.79 L to 1 US gallon and 4.54 L to 1 Imperial gallon. Some what confusing and I would have thought tundras shipped to Canada would have their computer software configured to Imperial gallons. I will ask my dealer if it can be changed. I currently get 15 mpg (US)city and up to 22 mpg highway if I keep my speed at or below 60 mph. The truck has 3500 miles on it.