Lexus RX300 Operating Data

I love keeping track of numbers. With cars, that means logging every gas fill and then using the various data points the car provides to do analysis.

Points to keep in mind:

I live in Elbert County Colorado, so the car is generally being driven at an elevation of 5280 or more feet ASL.

From my home to ANYTHING is 10 miles. Go to the store, come home, discover you've forgotten something, pop you just dropped 40 miles on the car. I actually averaged over 77 miles per day over the lifetime of the vehicle. So I put lots of miles on a car in a fairly short period of time.

The Lexus RX300 has a trip computer which keeps track of several factors. I use some of them in the spread sheet others I ignore.

Trip Odometer since the last fill-up. I use this but the actual car odometer is used for most computations. So, I guess this is just a test of my recording accuracy.

Miles per Gallon

	Current MPG (I don't use this anywhere as it is just a snapshot of gas mileage at any given instant. Go uphill it decreases coast downhill it increases.)
	MPG since last fill-up - This is the value in the spread sheet
	Overall MPG - A running MPG that can be reset. I don't refer to it in the Spread Sheet

Average Speed - The car keeps track of the average speed. I use this in the Spread Sheet to calculate engine hours. However it is undoubtedly inaccurate. For instance, when you come to a stop I believe it does not include the time spent at zero miles per hour. But, the engine is still idling.

Some overall numbers generated during my ownership of this car.

Car Purchased on:

May 28, 2001

Last Fill-Up on:

February 26, 2007

Total Mileage:

121,194

Total Spent on Gas:

$11,299.94

Total Gallons:

5646.724

Average $/Gal:

$2.00

Max $/gal:

$3.154

Min $/gal:

$1.089

Average MPH:

33.00

Average Miles Per Day

77.484

Avg MPG:

21.50

The charts below show the basic Miles Per Gallon and Price Per Gallon for gasoline usage in this car. The Excel spread sheet linked below has all the data from the first fill-up to the last (when I sold the car). This covers the period of time from June of 2001 until February of 2007. It is a nice glimpse of how the car performed over time and also what happened to gas prices during that period.

Lexus_RX300_Mileage_Public.xls - Excel Spreadsheet used to generate these charts.

As you can see, the RX300 got around 21 miles per gallon of gas. This fluctuates periodically with the introduction of the gas additive they use during the winter months. The very sharp drops represent when I was going on trips and on the highway. The RX300 doesn't do particularly well at mileage when running at highway speeds of 75 to 80 mph.


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