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Most, if not all, car listings will have a Miles Per Gallon or MPG figure. This is a measure of how efficient your vehicle is, based upon how many miles your can get from 1 gallon of fuel, and is also a measure of how much fuel your car uses. There's a lot of things that can affect your MPG, from tyres and fuel type, to driving style and frequency. Add on that fuel sold in the UK is measured in litres, and it can be really confusing to know how efficiently your car runs.
Eden Motor Group are the experts in wranging this number into something that makes sense to you, which we'll cover in this guide, but reach out to one of our friendly experts to chat more about fuel efficiency!
Other than helping buyers make an informed decision about their purchase by being able to compare cars on a shortlist, it is also used by the government to determine levels of road tax and how much company car drivers will pay too. This is because the MPG calculated figure and the official CO2 emissions are linked – the more fuel a car burns, the higher mpg and its emissions.
A small city car such as the Hyundai i10 has an official figure of around 67mpg. If you are looking at plug-in hybrid cars such as a Vauxhall Astra or MG HS then it gets a little more complicated, as the official MPG figure includes some driving with electric assistance. This means it may look unusually high – an Astra’s official combined MPG is 256, for example.
Diesels will usually have better MPG figures than a non-hybrid petrol car, but the gap is narrowing and as petrol is cheaper to buy at the pump, you may need to do some sums to work out what is best for you. The experts at Eden will be happy to help you crunch the numbers.
In the most basic terms, a car which is doing 50 MPG will be able to drive for 50 miles on one gallon of fuel. A number of gallons of fuel is equal to 4.56 litres of fuel, so if a litre of petrol is £1.80 then a gallon costs £1.80 x 4.56 which equals £8.21. Divide that by 50 and your car will cost 16p a mile to fuel. That will allow you to estimate the running cost of doing a long journey or perhaps compare the running cost of commuting to other modes of transport.
Obviously pure electric cars like the MG4 or Hyundai Kona Electric don’t use petrol or diesel at all, but it is still possible to compare the fuel efficiency using official, independently tested figures. The most common measure is miles per kWh (m/kWh) which measures the distance travelled using one kilowatt of energy. This can be worked out easily by dividing the official WLTP range figure by the battery size. Again, if you need any help understanding the figures then just ask an Eden expert.
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Eden Automotive Ltd/Eden Motor Retail Ltd is a credit broker not a lender. We work with a number of carefully selected lenders who may be able to offer you finance for your purchase. The lender will pay us a commission for arranging finance for you, upon request we can disclose these details to you. The lender will require a credit check and conduct an affordability assessment before making any offer of finance to you. All finance is subject to status. Terms and conditions apply.
FCA number: 305868/471208.