You’re cruising the highway on a lovely day, blasting a little Kenny Loggins, enjoying the sunshine and some fresh air without a care in the world, and it happens:
“DING!!!”
Your low-fuel light has come on. Congratulations: you’ve forgotten to feed your ride, and it’s telling you that it’s hungry. You’d best feed it soon, too – as before long, it’ll be dead on the side of the road.
But how much longer can you drive? Good question – and a complicated one. Aside from numerous factors affecting your real-life fuel consumption, including your speed, outside temperature, and terrain, there’s no standard amount of driving to be had after the dreaded “LOW FUEL” light illuminates from within your instrument cluster. As such, remaining range varies wildly, depending on what you’re driving.
Letting your ride’s tank get this empty is a bad idea for numerous reasons, and especially for us Canadians, who tend to do a lot of highway driving across empty, gas-station-free spaces. Running on empty is particularly bad in wintertime, when extremely low fuel levels can cause wide-ranging problems with the fuel system in our rides, and even put our safety and well-being into jeopardy.
So – how far can you make it?
Check below to see a list of the bestselling rides in Canada as of August 2016, and how far each can drive once the empty light comes on.
NOTE: These figures are close approximations only, and you should always drive with sufficient fuel in your ride’s tank.
| Model | Fuel (L) @ Warning | Highway Mileage (L/100 km) | City Mileage (L/100 km) | Highway Distance to Empty (km) | City Distance to Empty (km) |
| Chevrolet Cruze (1.4 Turbo/AT) |
7.6 | 5.6 | 7.8 | 136 | 97 |
| Chevrolet Silverado (5.3 V8/4x2) |
15.0 | 10.4 | 14.6 | 144 | 103 |
| Ford Escape (1.5 EcoBoost/AWD) |
4.8 | 8.3 | 10.7 | 58 | 45 |
| Ford F-150 (5.0 V8/4x4) |
5.8 | 10.6 | 15.3 | 55 | 38 |
| GMC Sierra (5.3 V8/4x2) |
15.0 | 10.4 | 14.6 | 144 | 103 |
| Honda Civic (EX/AT) |
7.2 | 5.8 | 7.8 | 124 | 92 |
| Honda CR-V (AWD) |
8.7 | 7.5 | 9.5 | 116 | 92 |
| Hyundai Elantra (AT) |
9.5 | 6.4 | 8.3 | 148 | 114 |
| Hyundai Tucson (2.4/AWD) |
7.8 | 7.8 | 10.1 | 100 | 77 |
| Jeep Cherokee (2.4/4x4) |
11.4 | 8.3 | 11.3 | 137 | 101 |
| Mazda 3 (2.0/6AT) |
8.7 | 5.7 | 7.9 | 153 | 110 |
| Mazda CX-5 (2.5/AWD) |
9.8 | 7.9 | 9.8 | 124 | 100 |
| Nissan Rogue (AWD) |
11.4 | 7.1 | 9.1 | 161 | 125 |
| RAM 1500 (5.7/4x4/8AT) |
11.4 | 10.9 | 15.8 | 105 | 72 |
| Toyota Corolla (CVT) |
7.6 | 6.5 | 8.3 | 117 | 92 |
| Toyota RAV4 (AWD) |
9.1 | 8.3 | 10.5 | 110 | 87 |
| Volkswagen Jetta (1.4T / 5MT) |
7.0 | 5.9 | 8.3 | 119 | 84 |
| Note: reliable figures were not available for the Dodge Grand Caravan, Hyundai Accent or Santa Fe Sport | |||||
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