Parents recently bought a new Toyota Camry 2013 base Altise model with the end of year sale, replacing the 15 year old Toyota Vienta v6, and we were hoping that the engine size goes from 3.0 v6 to the new 2.5 would be more fuel efficient, however with the first few weeks and the petrol top ups, we found it drinking the same amount of petrol as the old car.
Contacted the sales Rep, reply was you need to drive the car for about 20,000 km before you can get a good average.. That would take us about two years before we get to those kind of mileage.
Official Toyota website says 7.8l per 100km, it says tests on regular unleaded, and we have been using shell e10, so 10% less fuel efficient is expected, also they might quote freeway testing and we are using normal suburban traffic, not city traffic, but at 13l per 100km is a bit off.
What do you guys think? Do you really have to drive a few thousand km before the fuel consumption to improve significantly?
that's really quite quite dependent on a whole lot of things. the 7.8 figure for instance is the mixed rating and 'normal' city/suburban would be 10-11 for a 2.5L camry. your driving habit, what type of fuel you use etc also impacts on the efficiency.
also i wouldn't use e10 no matter whether a car takes it or not. you really aren't saving much at all after accounting for efficiency of the fuel and you won't do your engine any favours running e10 over a decade