What now?

[ZBB]

I say run it dry and have some Jerry cans with exactly the tank spec in them. See if you can fill them up (even slowly at the end).

There’s one other possibility in that the DTE and fuel light settings are messed up. You said that the light is supposed to come on with 2.3 gallons left — but you also said your wife says it comes on with the DTE around 40 (and it wasn’t on when you filled up with 39 on the DTE). At 2.3 gallons DTE should be around 90 miles. So I bet that the DTE mignt not actually be 0 with 0 displayed — since, you know, Toyota drivers... they are holding more reserve, so less to go in on top.

[equ]

Originally Posted by clyde

The megathread on rav4world.com has very little hard data and they rely on dubious refernce points like where the needle points on the fuel gage, distance to empty readings, etc, and very little "I went XYZ miles and it took A.B gallons of fuel using [pick your poison] fueling method."

Originally Posted by clyde

I'm kinda tempted. You know, for science.
...
And they're Toyota owners, so, they might not ever notice.

Ahh, good old 'Yota drivers...

Seriously. It would be tempting to solve the fuel tank issue and I'd be just as annoyed. That said... 95% of the time, I wouldn't use more than 10-11 gallons, if that, of the 14.5 tank, worrying about fuel pumps and all... Do you really want to do all this legwork? It's not that rare a car, likely will sell like hotcakes and the fix might be much easier a year on.

[clyde]

Originally Posted by ZBB

I say run it dry and have some Jerry cans with exactly the tank spec in them. See if you can fill them up (even slowly at the end).

There’s one other possibility in that the DTE and fuel light settings are messed up. You said that the light is supposed to come on with 2.3 gallons left — but you also said your wife says it comes on with the DTE around 40 (and it wasn’t on when you filled up with 39 on the DTE). At 2.3 gallons DTE should be around 90 miles. So I bet that the DTE mignt not actually be 0 with 0 displayed — since, you know, Toyota drivers... they are holding more reserve, so less to go in on top.

I haven't seen a DTE that didn't cheat on the "don't let the driver run out of gas side" on any car built after 1990. (A friend's grandfather up the street ran out of gas in his new 1986 Taurus a couple times before he finally learned.) Some don't have much range past 0, but they've all had some.

Originally Posted by equ

Ahh, good old 'Yota drivers...

Seriously. It would be tempting to solve the fuel tank issue and I'd be just as annoyed. That said... 95% of the time, I wouldn't use more than 10-11 gallons, if that, of the 14.5 tank, worrying about fuel pumps and all... Do you really want to do all this legwork? It's not that rare a car, likely will sell like hotcakes and the fix might be much easier a year on.

The missing few gallons is the difference between my wife filling up every 5.5 days and every 7 days and that's a big deal to her. The range of a car getting 43MPG with a 14.5 gallon tank made the car that much more attractive to her than if the tank was only 10 gallons. It was a significant factor in deciding to spend more on a new 2019 car than a used one. Waiting a year and doing 14? more fill ups while Toyota hopefully figures it out and fixes it is not an ok solution.

[kognito]

Originally Posted by clyde

The missing few gallons is the difference between my wife filling up every 5.5 days and every 7 days and that's a big deal to her. The range of a car getting 43MPG with a 14.5 gallon tank made the car that much more attractive to her than if the tank was only 10 gallons. It was a significant factor in deciding to spend more on a new 2019 car than a used one. Waiting a year and doing 14? more fill ups while Toyota hopefully figures it out and fixes it is not an ok solution.

I'm sure you already thought of this, but this fuel difference will really become a factor the first time you load it up and take a trip to the in-laws. At least, with my Mom's Prius MPG's really dropped when doing highway driving. If you have to stop every 250 miles to add gas, Tesla owners will be pointing at you and giggling

[JST]

Tesla owners are already doing that

[Nick M3]

IMO, unless someone has actually run the fucker dry and verified, this seems like a silly discussion.

Where manufacturers set the low fuel limits is highly variable.

My truck, for example, kicks the low fuel light on and shows empty on the gauge with 8-9 gallons remaining in the tank. (Out of 26.) This is just how GM likes it set.

So yeah, run it dry and see. I don't see how putting fuel in when you haven't even gotten the low fuel light that may or may not activate at a certain point on means anything at all. Traditionally, there is an expansion tank that overfilling can also put fuel in, plus there is the filler neck, so forcing extra fuel in isn't really meaningful either.

Edit: And by dry. I mean verified that the tank was empty. Unless Toyota has has put real effort in, I can't imagine that the fuel pickup will actually drain the tank dry.

Edit2: I mean, thinking about this some more... Notwithstanding destroying the evap components by pushing fuel in, with have the fuel automatically cutting at 9.6 gallons, plus 2.3 gallons notional reserve = 11.9 gallons.

PLUS, we have whatever delta there is between the reserve light and clyde filling the tank.

PLUSPLUS, we have a question about what the end of the reserve is defined as. Is it 2.3 gallons in the tank? Or is it 2.3 gallons that the fuel pump can get to?

This really seems like a gigantic nothingburger to me. Am I missing something here?

[clyde]

Originally Posted by Nick M3

IMO, unless someone has actually run the fucker dry and verified, this seems like a silly discussion.

Where manufacturers set the low fuel limits is highly variable.

My truck, for example, kicks the low fuel light on and shows empty on the gauge with 8-9 gallons remaining in the tank. (Out of 26.) This is just how GM likes it set.

So yeah, run it dry and see. I don't see how putting fuel in when you haven't even gotten the low fuel light that may or may not activate at a certain point on means anything at all. Traditionally, there is an expansion tank that overfilling can also put fuel in, plus there is the filler neck, so forcing extra fuel in isn't really meaningful either.

Edit: And by dry. I mean verified that the tank was empty. Unless Toyota has has put real effort in, I can't imagine that the fuel pickup will actually drain the tank dry.

I don't disagree that running it "out of gas" would answer a lot of questions.

[clyde]

Originally Posted by Nick M3

This really seems like a gigantic nothingburger to me. Am I missing something here?

Car is sold as having ~620 mile city range.

Car operates as having ~450 mile city range.

There's a lot of flavor in that burger.

If the instrumentation is lying, that presents other issues.

[rumatt]

Originally Posted by clyde

There's a lot of flavor in that burger.

Originally Posted by JST

Tesla owners are already doing that

[Nick M3]

Originally Posted by clyde

Car is sold as having ~620 mile city range.

Car operates as having ~450 mile city range.

There's a lot of flavor in that burger.

If the instrumentation is lying, that presents other issues.

620 miles / 43.8 miles per gallon = 14.16 gallons

You can’t seriously expect to run it that low regularly.