Fuel Tank Indicator

[googleman]

Does the main range indicator or the one on the Nav Info screen show the range based on the full amount of fuel in the tank, or does it leave some reserve amount out when calculating the range?

When I started the car this evening, the range was 16 miles. I headed to the nearest gas station which is literally in 2 miles. Due to the heavy evening traffic, the range on the Nav screen kept dropping fast, and when I finally entered the gas station, it showed a range of 1 mile! The thought of running out of gas in the middle of heavy evening traffic was quite stressful

When I filled the tank at the gas station, it stopped at 19.2 gallons. My question is, is the .8 gallon remaining in the tank for reserve, or is the range indicator not that accurate?

By the way, this last tank was all city driving, and I calculated the average mileage as 11.5MPG! I am glad that gas prices keep dropping, otherwise this would really hurt I paid $2.4 for premium today, and two months ago it was almost $4.

[Timmbo]

I can tell you that I have had both of my Nissans get so low on the Distance to Empty that It showed two *'s on the screen. So I think there is a sort of "safety reserve" there.

[drdamian]

i had the same problem. when i got in the car it said i had about 14miles left. i was going to get gas which was less than 9miles distance. about halfway there the car said i had 0miles to empty i was in traffic and i was really scared i was going to run out of gas. i feel in this regard the meter is not acurate at all.

[ecosse]

Remember that you are dealing with a computer which knows where you have been but not where you are going. You could come off a highway after a long cruising spell with 20 miles range showing and find it disappear very quickly as the computer adjusted to stop/start city driving.

I'm sure there is a reserve of some amount. I have 'driven on empty' a few times to get to the gas station. I'm sure some of our more adventurous members will be able to tell us how far they have stretched it.

[googleman]

Coming from a previous vehicle with fuel indicator issues, with which I had run out of gas multiple times in all sorts of weird places, I just hope that my EX is more accurate. Maybe it is a good thing that EX's computer is more conservative and leaves a reserve for those of us who push it to the limit

[aft981]

Maybe I shouldn't tell you all this, it might lull you into a false sense of security...but I regularly drive on the ****'s, and I did the same with my Murano.

Most of my driving is hwy, and I find that the ****'s tend to appear shortly after it reads 30-40 miles left. Infact, I always find from about 60-70 miles left it drops away pretty quickly.

I've done about 35 miles from the moment the ****'s come up to filling it up again.

What I've never understood though is exactly how big the fuel tank is on the car. The manual, website, and everything I've ever seen about the EX states a 20 gallon fuel tank, but I've filled up on numerous occasions and put more than that in. I think the most I squeezed in was 20.8 gallons once.

I reset one of the odometers each time I fill up, and also reset the average mpg on the info screen. I normally average just over 20mpg and know I can get around about 400 miles off each tank.

What I did notice is on that fuel economy screen where you can view a bar chart of your past average mpg's between each reset, it's been following the same path as oil/gas prices. Over the last couple of months as gas prices have fallen....so has my average mpg. I'm just not trying to drive as economically anymore! I just paid 2.19 for premium last night. Didn't think I'd hear myself saying that again!

[gloa2000]

I guess all the Nissan based vehicles with On Board Computer offers DTE(Distances to Empty) with some reserve amount in the tank, last night i was checking the DTE and it became **miles after counting down from 49miles to 30, i went to gas station, i filled the tank and pump stoped at 18.3 gallons. Since we have 20 Gallons Cap fuel tank, it looks like we can still drive around 40miles after it shows us ** miles. I have 04 Max SL came with OBC does the same thing i drove nearly 45 miles with **s on.

The only accurate DTE guages i found was my X 2000 328xi, which really stalled at 0 miles on the DTE cluster(that car did not offer ** miles.

So basically it is not definately accurate but its good enough to warn us its time to go to nearby gas station, it is not 100% accurate to show us 1 or 7 Miles to Empty because it all varies by how we drive, where/@what speed. You can notice your DTE is going up once you are cruising on the highway for a while. but its good to have when you are cruising on I-10 or I-20 driving over couple states.

NEXT GAS STATION121 MILES

gotta fill up @ this exit!