We're Getting More MPG

The average car/truck/SUV sold by the top eight brands in America makes almost one mile per gallon more than it did a year ago, according to sales-weighted data from the industry analysts at TrueCar.

TrueCar's TrueMPG industry average of 23.7 mpg remains the highest the car market has seen, 0.7-mpg higher than at this time last year. The biggest gainers by brand are Nissan and Chrysler, which improved their fleets by 1.1 mpg over last year's numbers.

“Despite the relative drop in gas prices, consumer's preference for fuel efficient vehicles only grew stronger in June,” said Jesse Toprak, senior analyst for TrueCar. “Even though we observed (an) unseasonably strong increase in truck sales in recent months, the higher efficiency of the new models resulted in another month of improvement in overall TrueMPG for the industry.”

Industry leaders are brands that have few or no full-size trucks to pull down their mpg figures. Hyundai has the highest average fuel economy among TrueCar's stats at 27.0 mpg, followed by a similarly truckless Volkswagen at 26.1 and Honda at 25.7. Two brands that offer full-size trucks are next with Nissan (which is struggling to sell any Titans) at 25.1 and Toyota, which is making quite a showing considering the relatively high number of trucks and SUVs in its lineup at 24.8 miles per gallon.

TrueCar points out that its TrueMPG is based on EPA mileage ratings and actual sales figures instead of projected sales used by other metrics.

If you break it down further into small car, medium car and truck categories you get a more detailed picture of the market's improved fuel economy. Among small car makers, Toyota leads with 34.9 mpg, followed by Nissan with 34.7 and Ford with 33.0 mpg. In the medium car segment it's Ford at 30.7 mpg, Mazda at 29.8 and Volkswagen at 29.2. In trucks, Chrysler leads with an 18.2-mpg sales-weighted average followed by Ford at 17.5 and Honda, which doesn't have the same kind of “trucks,” at 17.2.

Check out the whole report at True Car Truth Blog.

By Mark Vaughn