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I've always been of the mind that cruise control would get me better gas mileage on my 3 hour trips to Cleveland. Today I tested out to see what the difference was, on the way there with cruise I got 33.4 MPG. On the way back I got 37.6 MPG. That is an amazing difference. This is on an Auto Cruze. I'm going to up my tire pressure and see what I get on the same trip on Thursday. Thanks for the great write-up!

I have gotten better MPG not using the cruise control in ever car I have owned. I still sometimes use it, when my foot/ankle need a break or I am driving on the interstate.

With the cruise control in the cruze & the automatic, try using manual shifting mode. Instead of downshifting once you loose 2MPH like in full automatic mode on a hill, it will allow you to loose 8+ MPH(never fully tested to see if the cruise will eventually kick off). before I ever loose to much speed or slow other traffic I will manually downshift.

In my area with lots of rolling 150-300ft hills with steep grades allowing the car to loose more speed before downshifting, that means I can make it over half way up the hill(or all the way)with no downshift at all. Again these are steep grades that would normally kick down on every hill near the bottom, in a 30 mile drive that would be at least a dozen unneeded downshifts.

 

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Grade pricing is more of a station thing than a region thing. One station around here is always 60 cents a gallon more for premium, most are 40cents. I can go to Shell stations about 50 miles apart here, there is a 25 cents difference in the premium they sell(always). Not only that the one charging more is 91octane, the other is 93octane, both indicating there could be 10% ethanol in the fuel.

 

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I use cruise control daily on the highway, it helps, but since I drove in manual mode all the time, even though I'm at 1800rpm going 35mph in 6th gear, by the time I'm at 60mph, I'm around 3500 rpm, so I think I can't keep the rpms down much.

The 2012 automatic is geared much differently. You can not shift into 6th until 42mph(automatically downshifts to 5th at 40mph). I am not sure of the exact RPM at 60mph, but 58mph is 2,000RPM in 6th.

 

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The 2012 does have it, but I believe it's an Eco-only feature.

Thats correct, the game/graph is only on the eco models. There is a screen on my 2012 1LT with instant MPG & another with speed, tank range & instant MPG. I don't think the 2011 has any instant MPG read out at all.

 

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I figure that it idles high for ~15-20 seconds for a reason, why not let it finish?

That might be 15-20 seconds on a warm day, but when cold outside it might be 2 minutes before it comes off high idle. Best bet to not waste gas idling is to let it run for 10 seconds & get moving ASAP.

 

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Here is the RPM's in 6th gear riding down the road.

2,000RPM is 57-58mph in my 2012 1.4T auto. Must be nice to only run that low of RPM at 7-8MPH faster.

 

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You lose 1psi with every seven degree drop in temperature.....these little high mileage engines see that load and mileage drops accordingly.

My MPG had dropped slightly over the last few months. Checked my tire PSI in the morning at 32F outside, was only at 29 when cold. Pumped up to 37PSI cold and picked up 3-4MPG on my next few tanks.