Is mpg on bar graph average or best?

[ggarnier]

When I browsed to Honda del Sol and looked at the histogram (bar graph) of MPG reported, there was one at 55 MPG. This has to be for one fillup, right? I can't believe an average of 55 for this car. Nor can I believe 8 MPG (the other extreme shown) unless it had a leak in the fuel tank. (Mine runs about 38 MPG.)

This graph would be a lot more useful if it plotted average MPG. If it actually is average (rather than best tank, or for a car with only one tank entered) then it should not display vehicles with fewer than, say, 3 fillups.

Also, when I scanned down, I couldn't find the alleged 55 MPG del Sol - what's up with that?

[ggarnier]

Correction - it was the CR-V, not the del Sol graph that showed 55 as the extreme mileage. Even less likely!

[pb]

Yep, the bar graph shows average MPG from all the cars on the page. (I'm assuming you're talking about this page.) The highest MPG on the graph right now is 54, which belongs to this car, and yep it only has 1 fuel-up so that's probably not very accurate. MPG is rounded up for the graph, and matches are grouped together.

[pb]

Oh ok, we cross-posted comments. Same issues apply for the CR-V page. Keep in mind that Fuelly relies on user-submitted data. So if someone enters bad data it will show up on the site. We have some checks in place for wildly inaccurate data, but as long as it falls within the realm of realistic, we report it on the site.

That's why it's better to focus on averages for any given vehicle instead of outliers. And you can always send an individual driver Fuelly Mail to ask them why their mileage is so good and/or wrong.

[veryhumid]

IMO a record of 1 fillup shouldn't be included on the histogram