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I’ve been tracking my fuel consumption for months, but my actual mileage at the pump never matches what the car’s trip computer says. The onboard display is consistently about 2 miles per gallon more optimistic than my manual calculations. I’m trying to figure out which number to trust for my actual running costs.

I used to trust the dash readout, then I started tracking brim to brim by hand. The manual mpg showed a gap of about 1–2 mpg early on, and the computer would swing with weather or hard accel. After a few tanks I realized the tank math is the real anchor for running costs, even if the display gives useful trend data.

I started filling to the same brim every time, noted gallons and miles, and did the math. After five fills the hand calculation lined up with what I felt on real fuel burn, though the trip computer still wanders between tanks. My takeaway: treat the brim math as the cost baseline and let the display be a rough guide.

Do you think the issue is the display itself or the fill method?

Sometimes I drifted into thinking about highway vs city, then remembered the computer averages can hide short spikes. I still rely on the manual numbers for budgeting, while watching the dash for trends rather than exacts.

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