Hi all, I have a 1.9 TDi Superb and always fill it to the top when it gets just above the red, normally about £55 to full, my trip computer recalculates to say I have about 650 miles of fuel,

Today due to no card and only having cash I was forced to only put £30 in, first time I have never filled the tank, to my surprise the fuel gauge needle went almost to the 3/4 mark and the trip recalculated to 480 miles!

This got me thinking about the fact I have noticed that over a tank of fuel the gauge does read oddly, I drive most A and B road and very rarely motorways so I normally do 350 - 400 miles from full to 1/2 a tank but then struggle to get over 200 miles from 1/2 to just over the red, I have never worried about thi as when i'm just above the red the trip counter says I have 80 miles left, so by my calculations I average between 630 - 680 miles per tanks which aint bad given routes.

Has anyone else noticed how misleading the fuel gauge can be or is it just my car's?

It's not accurate, the top half seems to last an age, and once it drops below half full the car only does about 2/3rd's what it has already done on the imaginary first half a tank, most cars are the same I've found.

It's not accurate, the top half seems to last an age, and once it drops below half full the car only does about 2/3rd's what it has already done on the imaginary first half a tank, most cars are the same I've found.

Me too. My A-Class Merc had a crap fuel gauge.

When it got to about a quarter full the gauge could vary anywhere between a quarter and zero. This meant you were never quite sure how much fuel you had left :( . I used to go off the mileage I'd done.

Agreed I have the same problem, the first half goes realy slowly and it tells me I can get 980 from a full tank (km's) and then it gets halfway and before I know it the light is on, usuallly get 700 from a tank. You are not alone!

I have found the same thing, in a different way; 30 miles or so after filling up last, the trip computer indicated there was 860 miles to go to next refuel - suggesting that I could do 890 miles on the tankful, and for several hundred miles, the sum of how far I had gone + how far it would go remained around 900 miles, but after halfway, the sum came out lower and lower, until in the end I only got 800,