Class Action Lawsuit Filed over MPG Ratings

[Ron_W]

Traded in a 2013 c-max which we got the $550 back for the mileage issue. Am getting the stated or better mileage for the first 650 miles in the Ranger.

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[jsphlynch]

"The lawsuit cites multiple blogs that claimed to find the Ranger's fuel economy was not close to the EPA rating." That is very weak. Extremely week. Did I mention that was weak.

Judge: "So what evidence do you have to support your claims?"
Lawyer: "Well, Your Honor, I read it on the internet."

 

[EcoRanger]

I have 1550 miles on my Ranger XLT SuperCrew 4X4 and I consistently get between 23 and 25 mpg depending on my driving conditions. That's pretty damn good in mountainous WV that's the same mileage I was getting with my 13 Escape 4wd.

 

[MSG W]

Only 300 miles in but I am getting about 23.5, which beats my F150, hopefully it improves with a bed cover. Not sure what king of MPG folks want out of a truck

 

[Anthony]

I checked my dash display this morning, I've never reset it from the day I bought it. It read 20.5 as my average MPG in the dashboard (just about 5k miles)

Per Fuelley, my average is 19.3 mpg, a difference of 1.2mpg. Which is about a 6.03015% difference. I think that is well within the range and not a cause for concern. Like others noted above, it does seem to err on the side of making the mileage look better, but not a ridiculous amount.

I’m pretty much 50/50 city/highway.

 

[Rick - Saber]

I think some of those in the article complaining about mileage have not taken a few things into consideration. Engine break in plus software learning. Also winter fuel blend. Not sure when most of the country switched over to summer blend. Isn't winter blend and driving less economical leading to reduced mpg? Those things there probably make up a good chunk of the mileage already driven.

It is a shame the truck has only been out less than half a dozen months and people are jumping on the sue for anything band wagon. This society has gotten too litigious.

From what I have read Ford has not used any cheat devices. Only that they are questioning the formulas used to calculate the mpg.

It is after all a truck and doing truck things such as hauling and towing reduces mpg as well. This should be things truck owners already know and car buyers coming over may not.

 

[EcoRanger]

It is a shame the truck has only been out less than half a dozen months and people are jumping on the sue for anything band wagon. This society has gotten too litigious.

That's why I say There's No Hope For The Human Race

 

[Claudess]

I have 420 miles and the dash says 26.2 MPG. 90 of those miles was slower on country roads where my F250 gets 12.5 MPG and the rest was a 60-70 MPH road trip to the beach.

It seemed to get better MPG at 65-70 compared to 55-60 driving . But the engine is still new and tight and my experience is you don’t get accurate MPG until about 5,000 miles.

 

[Claudess]

Checks

Probably STARTED by a lawyer.

Yeah so having dealt with this with public company stock price issues. Typically there are lawyers that look for ANYTHING bad about a company on the internet. They then try to find one or more people who own the stock or the product to contact them about getting involved in a class action suit.

These lawyers can’t do a thing without one or more of us Ranger owners getting involved. If none of us calls them, they will start getting desperate as the deadline approaches. 99% of these go nowhere because no one joins the class.

 

[khyros]

I think some of those in the article complaining about mileage have not taken a few things into consideration. Engine break in plus software learning. Also winter fuel blend. Not sure when most of the country switched over to summer blend. Isn't winter blend and driving less economical leading to reduced mpg? Those things there probably make up a good chunk of the mileage already driven.

Winter fuel has 1.7% less energy in it. E10 fuel (which is basically what the gov't tells gas stations to use) has 4% less energy in it that E0 (which is what the gov't mandates auto manufactures to certify against). Right there you have a 6.7% difference in what the label says and what you should be seeing in the Jan-Mar that most of the data is based on. So, your 20/24/22 becomes 18.7/22.5/20.6...

And then if you take into account that cold air is more dense, air at 20F is 7.6% more dense than at 80F. This isn't anywhere near as straight forward of a calculation into fuel economy as it used to be since computer controls, direction injection and boost are going to be able to mitigate the density difference quite a bit better than an "old school" port fuel injected engine, but if we ignore those and just make the assumption that the same amount of volume of air is placed in the cylinder regardless of season, then you'd be using 7.6% more fuel to maintain the 14.1 AFR that petrol engines require, which would further reduce your winter driving to 17.4/20.9/19.1.

Yay data manipulation sponsored by the gov't! Now, whether or not the Ranger meets/exceeds these numbers is a different data set, but if the winter numbers on real fuel as experienced by real customers end up centering on 19mpg overall, then there's no problem with the Ford certification, just with the public knowledge and interpretation of what a fuel economy label means.


Also, something that's often overlooked is that the tests are done on what is considered the baseline vehicle configuration. I know once they're in production, that it uses the last year's sales to estimate what the most representative configuration would be, but I'm not sure how it is guessed to begin with. If Ford uses a SuperCab XLT 300A 4x4 as the base model, know that if you have a CrewCab Lariat 501A FX4, your vehicle is quite a bit heavier, and is lacking the aero dam, so your specific vehicle will be getting less fuel economy. Alternatively, if Ford said that the CrewCab Lariat 301A FX4 is the baseline, and you have a Supercab STX, you should see a higher number than what I calculated above because your vehicle is lighter and more aerodynamic.

*shrug. It's all a game though. And the fuel cost difference between 24 and 22.5 over a 100k lifetime of the truck, assuming an average of $2.50/gal, is $694.44... Meanwhile, your 40k truck has depreciated to 12k for a cost of $28,000, and you've spent $10,416.67 in fuel... So that difference ends up costing 1.8% more to your pocket... Less than the interest on the loan.

 

[RedlandRanger]

Winter fuel has 1.7% less energy in it. E10 fuel (which is basically what the gov't tells gas stations to use) has 4% less energy in it that E0 (which is what the gov't mandates auto manufactures to certify against). Right there you have a 6.7% difference in what the label says and what you should be seeing in the Jan-Mar that most of the data is based on. So, your 20/24/22 becomes 18.7/22.5/20.6...

And then if you take into account that cold air is more dense, air at 20F is 7.6% more dense than at 80F. This isn't anywhere near as straight forward of a calculation into fuel economy as it used to be since computer controls, direction injection and boost are going to be able to mitigate the density difference quite a bit better than an "old school" port fuel injected engine, but if we ignore those and just make the assumption that the same amount of volume of air is placed in the cylinder regardless of season, then you'd be using 7.6% more fuel to maintain the 14.1 AFR that petrol engines require, which would further reduce your winter driving to 17.4/20.9/19.1.

Yay data manipulation sponsored by the gov't! Now, whether or not the Ranger meets/exceeds these numbers is a different data set, but if the winter numbers on real fuel as experienced by real customers end up centering on 19mpg overall, then there's no problem with the Ford certification, just with the public knowledge and interpretation of what a fuel economy label means.


Also, something that's often overlooked is that the tests are done on what is considered the baseline vehicle configuration. I know once they're in production, that it uses the last year's sales to estimate what the most representative configuration would be, but I'm not sure how it is guessed to begin with. If Ford uses a SuperCab XLT 300A 4x4 as the base model, know that if you have a CrewCab Lariat 501A FX4, your vehicle is quite a bit heavier, and is lacking the aero dam, so your specific vehicle will be getting less fuel economy. Alternatively, if Ford said that the CrewCab Lariat 301A FX4 is the baseline, and you have a Supercab STX, you should see a higher number than what I calculated above because your vehicle is lighter and more aerodynamic.

*shrug. It's all a game though. And the fuel cost difference between 24 and 22.5 over a 100k lifetime of the truck, assuming an average of $2.50/gal, is $694.44... Meanwhile, your 40k truck has depreciated to 12k for a cost of $28,000, and you've spent $10,416.67 in fuel... So that difference ends up costing 1.8% more to your pocket... Less than the interest on the loan.

Great info. It is REALLY easy to get caught up in the MPG game. But I have to remind myself of your last statement - you can buy a LOT of fuel for a couple grand - people will spend a ton of money to get a few MPG better, but it doesn't really pay for itself over the life of the vehicle. I was getting in the neighborhood of 16 with my last ranger, and am getting in the neighborhood of 22 with this ranger, so percentage wise, that is a pretty good increase. But money wise, it isn't nearly as big.

When I was first evaluating trucks for what I wanted to buy, I had MPG as one of the considerations - after doing some calculations, I dropped it from the list of things to consider since it didn't really make much difference.

 

[rdm3671]

Personally I did not purchase the truck for its fuel efficiency. The fact that it gets much better mileage than my F-150 is just a bonus.

 

[FX4Greg]

I'm very happy with my crew cab FX4. Mileage calculated with my fillup app has been between 18.8 and 26.2. The numbers for the past week were from our vacation from KC Mo to Durango, Co then to Estes Park, Co and back to KC Mo. Interstate driving was with cruise set at 75. The numbers before May 4th were my wife driving mostly 8 miles per day round trip to work. Very little highway driving on other trips.

 

[yowen]

Maybe this is a bit more conclusive as far as it being a bit below average: https://www.fordf150blog.com/2019-ranger-real-world-fuel-economy/

But I bet you'd find that for just about any vehicle and they don't all have lawsuits attached to them. I bet at the end of the day it's totally possible to attain the numbers, it just takes driving like you have a raw egg under your foot and doing things like going 65 mph on the highway (in a 70 or 75).

 

[Rp930]

Ultimately guess who pays for these lawsuits.

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