MPG lookup: the EPA’s figures, by vehicle

Where the figures come from

fueleconomy.gov is administered by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the US Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. Its vehicle table holds fuel economy information for model years 1984 to the current one, and the four lists above — year, make, model, configuration — are its own menus, fetched as you choose. Drive adds nothing to the figures and keeps no copy of them.

How to read the result

• Combined, city and highway are the EPA estimates in miles per gallon for the vehicle’s main fuel. For an electric vehicle, and for one that runs on compressed natural gas, fueleconomy.gov gives the figure as MPGe, miles per gallon of gasoline equivalent.
• A second fuel, where the vehicle has one — E85 in a flexible-fuel vehicle, electricity in a plug-in hybrid — gets its own line.
• Electricity used is in kilowatt-hours per 100 miles.
• Tailpipe CO₂ is in grams per mile. fueleconomy.gov says that from model year 2013 it is based on EPA tests, and for earlier years it is estimated with an EPA emission factor.
• Annual fuel cost is fueleconomy.gov’s own figure. It assumes 15,000 miles a year, 55% of them in the city, and the fuel prices the site is using at the time, so it moves when prices move.

Why one model has several answers

The EPA rates a configuration, not a nameplate. A model sold with two engines and two transmissions has four ratings, and fueleconomy.gov often lists two-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive versions as separate models. Pick the configuration that matches the car. If you do not know the engine, decode the VIN: NHTSA’s decoder usually returns the cylinders and the displacement, and the desk uses them to choose the configuration when exactly one fits.

Limits

fueleconomy.gov says it has revised the MPG estimates of all 1984–2007 model year vehicles, and of some from 2011–2016, so that years can be compared; the figures here are the revised ones, which can differ from the original window sticker. Its makes and models are named its own way, not NHTSA’s. It rates vehicles in the EPA’s size classes — cars, pickups, vans, minivans, sport utility and special purpose vehicles, the heaviest of them under 10,000 lb gross vehicle weight rating — so a heavier truck will not be found. The estimates are the EPA’s; this page does not say what any one car will achieve.