Gas mileage: Are you getting what you should? (CBC Marketplace)

this week on Marketplace, do you know how much gas you're really consuming? You never really get

what

you're told. Are you spending hundreds more than you were promised? I think the seller, but the automotive industry doesn't tell you about those numbers on the window we never get to 5. your engine has to walk look how far we go to test if the promised gas

mileage

really is fuel proof. The raindrops keep falling on my head. We're at this gas station in the East End of Toronto. I'm Tom. Harrington from Marketplace on CBC oh my gosh, I thought that face looked familiar seeing how important gas

mileage

is to you.

How are you with the pH? No, I'm not the guy I am. Actually, I'm on CBC. Oh, hello, how important. Is fuel efficiency very important, very important? I drive a lot. I have a disabled son who participates in Special Olympics, so we drive. Sports all around when you purchased the vehicle, how important was fuel efficiency to you? It was quite important. you always want better fuel mileage Hey guys, and automakers know this, how are you doing? There are gas stations on St where no one knows your name, so ads like this promise that the gas station will become uncharted territory, the Chevrolet Cruise Eco with a notable highway fuel efficiency rating, but they are The manufacturers As automakers simply add to those claims, we're putting them to the test using Canada's number one-selling truck, the 2014 Ford F-150.

Now you might be thinking that's a big truck. The mileage may be that good but Ford says its ecoboost engine? makes a difference Test drive a Ford vehicle with an ecoboost engine and feel the performance of a larger engine with the fuel efficiency of a smaller one before you head out, a mechanic takes a look at our truck, yeah, good, yeah, everything looks good, the onboard computer will tell you. us our average fuel consumption the lower the number of lers used to cover 100 km the better the fuel efficiency how far will I go on a single tank of gas we are about to find out we are full of fuel let's fire up and hit the road these are the fuel efficiency numbers for the F-150 that Ford advertises, the highway where the rate is best and the city where the most gas is used.

So based on our route, we

should

be able to travel over 1400 km on a single fill-up. enough to get me back to CBC without running out of gas. I will achieve it? We headed west on the first leg of our trip from Toronto to the Sernia area. About 300 clamps, the computer tells us we're

getting

about 12 liters per 100km, that's after about 205km we've been on the road and it's almost entirely highway driving, so we'll see if this average holds , gets better or worse after another 100 km or so. I arrive in Wyoming, Ontario. Mary Furland drives a clean diesel Volkswagen Jetta TDI Mary is a nurse and when she bought the car 3 years ago, her home visits meant driving 1,000 km a week.

Hello Mary. Hello how are you doing? Thanks to Harington from Marketplace for putting those kinds of miles on a car. I want something that's good on gas, so the number one reason I bought that car was because I was promised it would get good gas mileage and Mary got that proposal from her local Volkswagen dealership. He said: "Look at the math and you'll find out that you're going to save money on gas. When did you first realize that

what

they were promising and what you were

getting

were different? It probably wasn't even two months later. Volkswagen Canada claims that this model It offers a combined mileage of 5.8 L per 100 km.

Mary was only getting 6.9 and is complaining to the dealership that the car you sold me is not getting the gas mileage you promised and I would like you to do something and what. they said? Did they make excuses? He just said that I basically needed to drive like an old lady and I had to follow the speed limit and that kind of thing, the old tricks to save fuel, so let's go back to our road trip test and the beginning. of the second day, so far we are burning, we are using gas faster than we

should

, the numbers are very close at the moment, I don't know what we are going to get, but we have a 5 hour Drive Parry Sound, we will see how it ends, it is a long drive to Parry.

Sound, thank God for satellite radio, come on honey, I'm just a human being as we pass over the top of the big city, off the highway into some city driving. I'm actually getting into Toronto traffic. I'm really crazy now. No stress, we'll be heading north to Ontario soon. I'm coming to Cottage Country on Lake Wabash casat. Now this is an escape from life on the road. We're here to talk to Pete Drinkwater. He actually owns an F-150 EcoBoost just like we do. Test truck in 2011, it was Ford's TV commercials that sold it. Dennis was absolutely right and I always remember his voice and how he said 32 m per gallon.

Incredible ecological boost. You won't be suffocated every time you fill the tank. Because he can also get the best fuel economy, he won't believe the mileage, he's right. I don't think he can get only about 16 m per gallon, about half of what Ford advertises in 2 weeks. I took it since I think something is wrong with it because I'm not getting gas mode and they told me at first oh it just has to break which I did and left it, it broke never mind did you go back to the dealership and did you speak? I told them again yes, they said he was probably driving too fast.

They said it got 32 miles per gallon in perfect road conditions. I said what's perfect downhill with the wind behind you, so how do I explain it? The difference we catch up with automotive journalist Michael Bort is if people expect to get the mileage they are promised from their vehicle, not the ones currently on the window sticker, unfortunately, and the reality is the official figures in Canada for the last 7 years. they are inflated, they really are inflated, inflated, how does it turn out that all the car manufacturers do their mileage tests in a laboratory, as you can see in this recent video from Ford, they never go out on the road, they never use their cruise control systems much climate.

Many people don't realize that it only measures fuel efficiency up to 97 km per hour. Now you're going on 400 freeways and nobody's going 60 miles an hour, so all those things are going to mean that when you hit the road and you do it. those things those numbers you see won't be anywhere near the numbers these tests told Ford that Pete not on a highway not in a city he's in a lab look they don't tell me that should they should should tell exactly how they test it because I'm buying it I'm the consumer doesn't exactly build confidence as we're on the final leg of our road trip through Marketplace it's getting dark as we leave Parry Sound I'm heading back to Toronto and right now I'm less than 100 kilometers away from being empty.

I'm getting the warning signal now that fuel is low when we get back. A stormy night raises the stakes. This is crazy and a stormy exchange that is. on, yes, turn it off. Sorry, turn it off. Please refuel with tips for better mileage and share yours on Facebook and Twitter. It's the road trip challenge of the market, trying to determine if this ecoboost-powered F-150 pickup truck can deliver on the fuel efficiency Ford promises, but now as evening approaches I see a warning that the fuel level is low and I'm still about 200 clicks away from the CBC in downtown Toronto, then the weather turns nasty, it's bad enough being empty, but it's a dark and stormy night it's hard to drive I can't see anything this is crazy there you have finally still half an hour from CBC that's all I ran out of gas so our final average fuel efficiency is 12L per 100 km not so The good thing Ford advertises is the amount of mileage Ford said we would get on a single tank of gas in this F-150 that we didn't get while it's raining.

I spill raindrops that continue to fall on my head. We asked to speak to Ford. but apparently they don't have a spokesperson available, so he turns to the group representing the big three, Ford, GM and Chrysler, the Canadian Manu Vehicle Manufacturers Association, to meet with president Mark Dante. The only way to achieve that number is. This can be achieved if you follow all of the good driving behaviors and fuel-efficient driving tips that both the government and vehicle manufacturers offer in their owner's manuals and that most People don't do well, but they still market this information. Make them feel like they are going to get this kind of mileage.

Well, it's so you can make an informed decision about purchasing your new vehicle. That is the purpose of those values. We talked to car buyers who felt that when they bought a car when they were promoting them on the sales floor they told them they were going to get numbers they promised them good performance, you know, car dealers are independent business people, the question is whether They are properly trained to, um, give people the right information when it comes to those values ​​and what they mean, so we took our hidden cameras to some showrooms, this Mazda 3 promises 4.8L per 100 km on the highway , the fine print says that actual fuel consumption may vary so could we understand that, yes you will get a 4.8, maybe an even better car so you can be better than the post, yes because I tell you why , because sometimes there is a wind speed too.

Next, we visited this Chrysler dealership. The window sticker on this 2013 Dodge Dart says 5.4L per 100 km on the highway, so let's take it for a test drive right now. It says 9.6. We seem to be misunderstanding what the window sticker is suggesting. Remember that you also have the air conditioning working. so that FS the type of fuel is a little bit when we go off the road, we never get to point 5, that is, it will go down to where your engine has to walk. Next, we checked out this Ford dealership and asked about the fuel rating on the window.

Of this F-150 EcoBoost as our test vehicle, you won't see any vehicle doing what it says, the way they test those vehicles, they only test in an environment, this time a more direct answer to what we heard, they are actually changing . the testing methods on everything because to be more realistic, yes this is not really very outdated wait what to change the testing methods from now on Ottawa is making all automakers put their 2015 models through additional testing that Take into account the air conditioning. higher speeds and faster acceleration and braking, this government video makes it sound like good news all around, fuel consumption rates will immediately increase by 10-20% for most vehicles because what really What it means is that the fuel numbers on the car you bought are 10. up to 20% worse than what you were told in Wyoming, Ontario.

We told Mary Furland what these new fuel numbers mean for her car. These are their old numbers: 6.7 city, 4.7 highway, now they'll be this 7.9 and 5.7 I. I'm not surprised because those are the numbers I'm getting right now on my own vehicle when we do our calculations, but that's not why I bought the car in Lake Wabash. K Pete Drinkwater isn't exactly thrilled that his truck has been picking up. In his pocket they must have known that they were lying about it like he doesn't know how they can follow the advertising and then when I ask them about it they say everything is fine, that's what I don't understand and now they are changing it.

Well, it's too late, I already bought it. I already spent the money. In fact, Canadian car dealers and manufacturers should have known about us. Matchmaking companies have been advertising higher, more realistic fuel figures for the same type of cars and trucks sold here since 2008. The US government changed their testing, so what about the millions of us who buy cars and trucks with the promise of gas savings that aren't real as a society? If we take a stance on this, I think we can all come together and say, you know what's wrong, you know, I think we should be compensated if people were compensated if they've been driving a car in false conditions, oh absolutely, I'm sure. that they should be compensated for it somehow, of course they should, oh almost.

People have definitely been telling us that they feel misled by these numbers, that these two different systems tell them that it means I bought my car under essentially false pretenses about fuel efficiency. Do you have anythingreason? Well, I go back to the fact that these are for For comparison purposes, the numbers that aired on the are also marketed that way, they are marketed with advertising, the TV commercials push a certain number, but again, those numbers are all relative and they are all relative to comparable vehicles of the same class, but this is a case where it seems that Canadian car buyers were being treated differently than American car buyers in terms of fuel efficiency and believe that that simply It's not right, it's not fair, yes, there are differences, but we are moving away from that and the numbers are going to improve. and you know, unless some mistakes were made or companies intentionally misled them, then that would be a different question.

Mary Furland feels cheated. She ended up spending a lot more money on gas than she expected. We do the math and reveal how much money. Do you pay much more in gas per year because of this difference? $650, that's a lot of money. You know I don't know what to say about it. Do you feel like you are owed compensation in some way for gas? money you spent I feel like they owe me something your dealer doesn't want to talk to us so we go there along with Mary Hello, we wanted to talk to someone here about the problem you are having with the mileage on your car Hello, how am I doing it right, thank you.

I'm Tom Harrington from Mark Place on CBC. Yes, turn it off. I'm sorry. Turn it off. The man who sold the Jetta to Mary is coming. Sales Manager, Mike Van AER. Hello.Hi Mike, how are you? I am good how are you? Mike agrees to talk to me alone in his office. She spent hundreds of dollars more than she expected to pay for gas and no one is helping her at all. Nobody is giving him any compensation. Mike. He leaves and returns to the dealership owner, Joe, and everything, hey, who's in charge here. They told him that you are going to save a lot of money by driving this vehicle, so they agreed to talk to Mary Mary.

After a long discussion, they make Mary an offer. free tank of gas with the promise to test your car's mileage again thanks for talking ok see ya thanks ok bye he said he just read the numbers Volkswagen has yeah and he didn't even consider that no They would be totally fine. She didn't feel very good why this car wasn't going to receive it. They borrowed Mary's Jetta and two weeks later her test result, it all depends on how you drive, but Mary still says they should tell you when you buy the car and as for that.

Gas tank free and when she gets her car back from the dealership, the needle is empty.