When you’re shopping for a new car, price and practicality are important, but so is fuel economy. The Environmental Protection Agency provides fuel economy ratings for almost every vehicle currently on sale, but how does that translate to real life? Our friends over at Consumer Reports independently test new cars to see what kind of fuel economy they actually get in the real world and recently published a guide to the cars that perform the best in that particular test.
It’s broken down by category, and the top vehicles were judged based on the category they’re in, so getting 25 mpg would be considered impressive for a truck but not for a midsize car. We’ve also only included the top five finishers for each segment even if Consumer Reports included more entries on its list. Now, let’s take a look at what made the list.
[Update: Because this list shows Consumer Reports’ real-world observed fuel economy, any vehicles that it hasn’t tested itself were not included.]