What Is Considered Good Enough Fuel Mileage a Fuel-Efficient Car Should Have?

A vehicle’s fuel mileage is arguably the most important figure to look at when it comes to measuring how efficient any vehicle is. For example, if a car gets “good fuel mileage,” then it has a fuel-efficient engine, but if it gets “bad fuel mileage,” then its engine is not very sufficient. 

However, there’s more to it than that, so let’s take a look at what is considered good fuel mileage.

What is Fuel mileage?

Fuel mileage is determined by the number of miles a vehicle can go on one gallon of fuel. Hence the term “miles per gallon (mpg).” The higher the mpg rating, the better or more efficient a car is, and the lower the mpg rating, the worse it is. 

For example, if a car can travel 40 miles on one gallon of fuel, then it’s able to achieve 40 mpg. Since city driving requires a lot of low-speed travel, as well as stop-and-go idling, the city mpg number is usually around 5 mpg lower than a car’s estimated highway mpg rating.

What Makes Up a “Good Fuel Mileage?”

The notion of a vehicle getting “good fuel mileage” is technically relative to the type of driving someone does. For example, it’s easy to say that a car that is able to achieve 40 mpg gets good fuel mileage, however, that example might not work for some drivers that need to use something larger than a passenger car for their daily duties.

In that case, a larger vehicle like a Toyota Highlander Hybrid, which can earn an EPA-estimated 35 mpg in the city and on the highway might seem like a better value in terms of mileage for those in need of something that can seat up to eight passengers. Ultimately, good fuel mileage is all relative depending on which category of vehicles you’re examining.

The notion of any vehicle getting “good fuel mileage” is really dependent on what type of vehicle you need for your lifestyle. And it’s ever-changing as newer models come out and technology advances, which makes the MPG scale move even higher. After all, 30 mpg used to be good, but now 50-60 mpg combined will soon be the norm. 

Generally, what constitutes good fuel mileage depends not entirely on the MPG of a vehicle, but also on your type of vehicle and your lifestyle. However, a vehicle that gets at least 29 and 35 mpg city and on the highway has a good enough fuel mileage.