2007 Honda Fit Real World Fuel Efficiency

Some call this Fuel Economy or Gas Mileage

This page details our record of fuel use for this car. We really like the Fit. You can carry eight foot 2x6 lumber in the car! We are hoping to get a roof rack for a canoe but haven't yet decided whether to get the clamp on style, which many people recommend against, or the through the roof style which leaves small permanent anchor points on the roof.

The official efficiency ratings (l/100 km) for the 2007 Honda Fit are:
  City    Highway
  7.3       5.8

My Observations

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     Total fuel consumed =  6813.7 litres
      Total cost of fuel =  7817.27 dollars
  Maximum fuel price was = 1.489 dollars/litre on 2008-07-18
  Minimum fuel price was = 0.819 dollars/litre on 2008-12-18
Total distance travelled = 97743 kilometres
      Total CO2 produced = 15700 kg
    CO2 per km travelled =     0.16 kg/km
         Mean efficiency =     6.97 l/100km
   Mean fuel cost per km =     8.0 cents/km
    Purchase cost per km =    20.8 cents/km
 Maintenance cost per km =     4.0 cents/km
   Insurance cost per km =     6.1 cents/km
   Operating cost per km =    38.9 cents/km

BC Carbon Tax Summary
         Dates            Tanks    Rate      Volume       Tax
                                 (cents/l)     (l)        ($)
 2008-07-01 to 2009-07-01   43     2.34     1230.80      28.80
 2009-07-01 to 2010-01-01   19     3.51      529.76      18.59
 2010-01-01 to 2010-07-01   19     3.33      505.64      16.84
 2010-07-01 to 2011-07-01   40     4.45     1005.45      44.74
 2011-07-01 to 2012-07-01   31     5.56      921.04      51.21
 2012-07-01 to 2013-07-01   23     6.67      556.67      37.13
 Totals                                     4749.36     197.32
Climate Action Dividend = $ 400.00
    Net Carbon Tax Paid = $-202.68
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We received an initial payout of $400 (called the Climate Action Dividend) for our family of four and our income tax has also been reduced. That reduction is not included here but obviously is contributing to further benefits for us. In general people seem to have very little understanding of how this excellent programme works. I hope a few numbers from a real world example will help people understand. Only those who burn a lot of fuel are being punished by the tax and for them it is great incentive to reduce their fuel use (and carbon emissions!).

A further caveat in this analysis is that I have not included the fuel oil we had to buy for the (1970s era) oil burning furnace that was installed in our house when we bought it. We only spent one winter and a fall with that furnace before we managed to arrange to remove it and replace it with an electric air source heat pump. I have not included the carbon tax that we paid on the fuel oil but it was probably about $20 or so. I don't have good records of the fuel oil we bought ... on the other hand it was partially (5% apparently) "bio" sourced oil so that part was carbon-neutral.

With regard to the maintenance, we have done what the car has told us to do by way of the dashboard maintenance codes. Insurance on a modest car that is still reasonably new is about $1000 per year here in BC for drivers with the maximum discount of about 40%. Obviously, the per kilometre purchase cost will continue to fall and the other costs will rise (somewhat).

I thought it might be appropriate to add a bit more information about how I typically commute to and from work. For the past ten years or so I have used three different bicycles to commute. The commute is about five kilometres each way. I ride rain or shine and even in snow (but ice is bad news -- when icy I have walked or run or driven the car). Luckily ice and snow are rare here in Greater Victoria. Ten years of commuting this way amounts to about 25 000 km by bicycle. Given that my car produces 0.16 kg/km of CO₂, using my bike instead has prevented the emission of about 4000 kg of carbon dioxide. I've also saved about $2000 on gasoline. If I didn't have the car at all I could estimate how much money I saved by bicycle commuting by using the per kilometre operating cost (shown in the table above). Using 40 cents per kilometre amounts to $10 000 that I wouldn't have had to spend on car ownership over the past ten years.

Bicycles certainly have some emissions cost associated with their production and delivery but that's much less than similar costs for a car. I would have only used two bicycles over this time but one of mine was stolen and had to be replaced. Some people (many?) go through a similiar changeover in new cars over ten years. Yes, I had a different car for the first part of the last decade, but it was very similar in efficiency (old, broken page here).

Have you ever thought about the relationship between your car's mass and its fuel efficiency? Rhett Allain has.

Figures

Fuel Use Versus Distance Travelled

Colours indicate the order of the fill-ups. Red is most recent and blue is oldest. The ROYGBIV rainbow order is followed (approximately). The lines show the official efficiency ratings: dashed is city travel and dotted is highway travel. Ideally we would want to see all of the observations between or below these lines. The red dash-dotted line is the best fit to the data assuming that the line goes through the origin -- it must, you don't use any fuel if you don't drive any distance. It seems pretty clear that if we could isolate the observations related solely to city driving the slope would be steeper (worse) than the official rating. Is this related to driving style? The car is driven by two different drivers. That variable is rolled up in the observations as well.

Distance Travelled

Fuel Efficiency as a function of date

Gasoline Price

See my page showing a longer record of gasoline cost.

Cumulative fuel consumption

Fuel consumption vs. Distance driven

What do the "GasPods" do?

Gasoline Prices since 1998 in Western Canada

Old car page -- 1985 Honda Wagovan and 2001 and Honda Civic Coupe