motor home mpg

Steeljag wrote:

rhagfo wrote:
If you are asking for an idea what it wil cost to operate, just figure 5 mpg and figure fuel cost at $5 a gallon.

Lol....OP is in Florida where gas is about $ 2.29 a gallon ( yesterday anyway), and no real hills (unless your cycling) so he/she can use a much better 6.5 to 8.5 mpg !

Welcome, as stated above RV'ing and MPG have no real connection (Unless you are just trying to budget for a up coming trip). If mpg is a big concern, you may want to look into the diesel class Bs!

Good luck!

Yep, that is today's price, not long ago fuel was near $5.00 a gallon. Best plan for the worst case and enjoy anything better.

The biggest 'negative' impact on fuel mileage is the number of square feet of frontal area of the rig. Aerodynamic designs can help 5-10% on fuel mileage, but you are still pushing a huge sail down the highway at 55 - 65 mph.

Second impact is grades. A stretch of freeway which is relatively flat, but has a lot of up and down where the freeway goes over roads can cut fuel mileage 15% or more vs running the service roads and stop/go traffic.

Weight has an impact, but it is minimal to the other unless you are hitting steep grades over 5% for long periods of time.

Momentum driving can have a big good impact on fuel mileage - i.e. coasting down hills and not climbing hills at a set speed.

Trying to maintain a steady speed on grades is going to hurt fuel mileage.

Other things like slow starts, easy stops, etc - all pay off.

Drive by the tach, not the speed. Try to keep the tach in the most fuel efficient range.

We had an '02 32' Class A with the V-10 which we bought in 2010. Over the three years we used it (about 6000 miles total) we averaged 7.2 mpg. All our trips were in Washington and Oregon. The majority were on the west side of the Cascades - maybe 4x a year over the mountains. Of course, at 1200' to 2000' above sea level east of the mountains, the aerodynamic drag is slightly less.

The opposite argument is that CG fees are a lot less than hotels and you do mostly the same kind of cooking as at home, so you save on both those.

You can't pick a particular brand that gets better mpg, it's based on type and chassis. Class C's on a sprinter chassis is likely to be the best. However these are smaller and usually cater to 2 people. Secondly - oddly enough are the new breed of entry level Class A diesels. Despite their weight and size can hit some double digit MPG - and when I say hit double digit I mean like 11-12. Coming in last is anything on a gas chassis - Class A's and C's. You can expect 6-9 mpg.

As with everything there are considerations. Class B's are smaller but get better mileage. Smaller does not mean cheaper though as a B on a Mercedes chassis is likely to cost more than an entry level class A. Class A's are much larger and geared more toward family camping. Gas models are cheaper but ride worse than their diesel brethren and suffer in MPG. Diesel pushers (DP's) are the best ride and creature comforts but are typically the most expensive.

The overarching theme is that you usually don't approach RV's with an MPG approach. You want an RV to explore, camp and travel knowing that MPG is horrible and that your depreciation goes down faster than a fat kid on a see saw. You pick a type of RV based on your needs not for being a grocery getter.

If you tow a car then while your RV may get 8 mpg, your car is getting unlimited mpg. ;)

Biaggio wrote:
18+ MPG on my Winnie ERA class "B"

I figured somebody would come up with that.
But I don't think that any class B really qualifies as a "motor home".

18+ MPG on my Winnie ERA class "B" and the RV works for my wife and I.
As others said, an expensive hobby and there is no limit on what you can spend.

hattis1 wrote:
what brand of mh gets the best mpg? we are considering a vegas 24.1

To answer your question, a MBZ Sprinter chassis MH or diesel Class B.

I have a Beaver 40' diesel pusher with a CAT 330 hp engine. I always get 7-8 mpg towing the car or not.

As for what brand of motorhome gets the best mileage, that may be one of the old small class C's built on a Toyota pickup chassis, particularly if it has the four cylinder engine. I believe many of them regularly get double digit gas mileage. They have their drawbacks, of course; they're getting pretty old, they're small, and they're very much underpowered, even by RV standards.

Some of the smaller Sprinter based motorhomes get relatively decent fuel mileage (not gas mileage, of course, since they burn diesel fuel). That's partly because diesel has greater energy per unit volume than gasoline.

Traveling at a slower speed will improve gas mileage a good bit in a motorhome. A large part of the power is going to fighting air resistance, and that increases at something like a cubic or quadratic rate with respect to speed. Motorhomes have only slightly better aerodynamics than barns.

To answer your question, the best MPG will likely be something built on a Mercedes Sprinter chassis with their little diesel engine. It will likely get significantly better MPG than something built on a Ford or Chevy gas chassis. But it still will be considerably less than a car.