Hi all,

XLT, 2.7 302A.

Anyone else having an issue where the distance to empty reading stays the “same” after driving for 50 miles? This happened after I filled up 1/2 tank but I tried again filling a full tank and same result... first time Ford owner..

thanks

 

That's not entirely unusual, at least based on your mentioned results. The DTE is a long term aggregate of some number of miles I don't fully recall, it may be 100. Depending on your driving situation during that time, your fuel economy average for that rolling 100 miles may go up. This can be especially true as we are heading into warmer weather and as the engine breaks in. In any case, the DTE is almost entirely useless and I wouldn't give it a second thought on any vehicle. I wish they would just do away with them because until we develop time travel they are entirely unreliable.

If you go for a 50 mile drive on the freeway at 65, your DTE may go to 700 miles on a full tank (36 gallon tank example), If you then return to your normal commute to work and it's mostly city driving, your DTE will drop at a faster and faster rate, and a full tank may now be 550 miles. Then you go on another freeway trip and it read 550 but for 50 miles or so, continues to read 550 because you are replacing old MPG data at a roughly equivalent rate as you are burning actual fuel. That's how you end up sitting at the same DTE amount for 50+ miles.

I don't knock Ford for it because no auto maker can possibly do it better, as the next time you use the vehicle your driving conditions can change and DTE is useless. I think they only include it because some people need to see it.

 

300 miles. Was 500 at one point.

https://www.f150forum.com/f118/dte-d...5/#post6469091

 

Thank you for the response. I thought it was broken already!

 

Yep! The only way I have seen it done better is in EVs, Tesla especially but the Mach E does it decently also if you use the built in Nav. For Tesla it will estimate your DTE based on the route you enter, and will take into account the elevation changes. While I haven't owned a Tesla, from road trip reviews and that I have seen, it generally comes out fairly accurate, as best as you can expect given that some variables (traffic, wind, etc) are tougher to judge over a longer trip. The Mach E does the same thing, but I guess it doesn't yet take elevation changes into account, which hopefully they will add before too long as it makes a HUGE difference, EV or ICE.

In any case, I don't believe the '21 F-150 built in Nav adjusts the DTE based on input route, but if it did that would be nice. Since not all F-150s have full time Nav though, I don't believe it's there.

 

Are you shutting your vehicle off during fuel fillup?

I'm in a 2016, but it has never stayed the same reading after a fill, or during a drive. While I can't speak to any level of accuracy- it does change continually.

I agree that your DTE may change by rate of which it is adjusted, but if you've driven for an hour on the highway, that's more than enough for it to realize you've cover 50 miles and your DTE should be different -if even by 5 miles, not 50.

Curious if the computer didn't get to recalculate if vehicle was running while the fillup occurred.

When I 'ran out of gas' in the driveway once -I started with 80DTE in the garage. Once I finally got it started, added about 7 gallons -it took a long time for the DTE to get out of "orange gas pump mode" to over 100 DTE. That was mostly at idle sitting in the garage though. A while = several minutes.