2017 Chevy Silverado 1500 Fuel Mileage

[RCW]

I’ve had 6 Chevy Silverado trucks in a row since 1997. All of them red.

I don’t drive the truck in “D” which allows variable valve timing to shut down the 5.3l 8 cylinders to 4.

Always do manual and 5th gear. Precludes the 4-cylinders option.

Obviously just turned 60,000 miles. Bet it doesn’t have 500 of those miles in Drive.

Just got back from my folk’s place over very rural roads over hill ‘n dale.

Don’t know how accurate, but says 24.7 mpg average for last 50 miles.

First truck of the bunch that has that kind of fuel economy.

5.3L engines of the era have been known to have oil consumption issues. This one burns no oil, and I wonder if because I lock out the cylinder reduction process?

 

[BXHoosier]

These newer trucks are capable of great fuel economy. I have a 2016 Silverado 1500 with the 5.3L. Until I got a programmer for it, I almost always drove in M5 to keep it running in V8. The programmer allows me to disable the AFM (Active Fuel Management) and it stays in V8. It also has adjustments for the throttle response and shift response which make the engine and transmission much more responsive. Turning off the AFM has had no effect on economy. I’ve done a few modifications (2-1/2” lift, 33x11.5 10 ply tires, removed air dam) that have definitely hurt my fuel economy and I still average 19mpg commuting to work and I’ve squeezed out 22mpg on a trip on 2 lane highways at 55-60 mph.

Mine has 92k miles and doesn’t use any oil either. My previous ‘09 Silverado didn’t use a drop of oil either even though those trucks were notorious for using a quart of oil every 1,000 miles.

 

[mikester]

You can see some interesting comparisons here. You can see that fuel economy seems to be improving.

Chevrolet Silverado 1500 MPG - Actual MPG from 6,273 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 owners

The most accurate Chevrolet Silverado 1500 MPG estimates based on real world results of 148.7 million miles driven in 6,273 Chevrolet Silverado 1500s

www.fuelly.com

I don't hold much stock on the vehicle's trip computers as they are very over optimistic in comparison to reality and don't jive with actual fuel used and money spent.

 

[DaveFromMi]

I worked in the auto industry, mainly on cars and SUVs. There was a trend of dropping the engine size and adding a turbo to increase FE. In most cases, FE got significantly worse. My company started to offer a 6 cylinder as a base grade in a full size van. You had to upgrade to get the existing V8. FE dropped ~20% with the smaller engine. I believe that this was due to the engine operating point shifted with the smaller engines. The smaller engines have to work harder to do the same tasks and that new operating point resulted in worse FE.
We benchmarked other competitors as well. We evaluated 2 SUVs, one with a base 4 cylinder and the same model with a smaller 4 cylinder HEV powertrain. In city driving, the HEV FE was about 40 % better than the base. On the highway, the base vehicle FE was about 10% better.