MPG Lookup · off fueleconomy.gov
The EPA’s MPG,
for any car since 1984.
Choose a year, a make and a model, then the engine and transmission, and the official city, highway and combined estimates are read straight from fueleconomy.gov — the US government’s fuel economy site, which Oak Ridge National Laboratory runs for the Department of Energy and the EPA. For an electric car the figure is MPGe; a plug-in hybrid shows both fuels and the composite; every record carries tailpipe CO₂ and fueleconomy.gov’s own annual fuel cost. Looking up a car is free, and the figures are the EPA’s own.
fueleconomy.gov’s own four menus · model years 1984 on · MPG or MPGe, city, highway, combined · CO₂ and annual fuel cost · read live, nothing kept
The lookup
Year, make, model — then the engine.
The four lists are fueleconomy.gov’s own menus, read as you choose. It names makes and models its own way — often with 2WD and 4WD as separate models — and rates each engine and transmission separately, so the last list asks which one the car has.
fueleconomy.gov’s menus
the lists
The lists are read from www.fueleconomy.gov as the page opens.
Nothing but the year, make, model and configuration number is sent, and only to www.fueleconomy.gov. Have a VIN? The VIN Decoder decodes it with NHTSA and opens the configuration its engine matches.
The EPA’s figures
waiting for a car
Choose a year, a make, a model and its engine above, then press Show the MPG.
Reading it
The EPA rates a configuration, not a nameplate.
Where the figures come from
fueleconomy.gov is administered by Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the US Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. Its vehicle table holds fuel economy for model years 1984 to the current one, and the four lists above are its own menus, fetched as you choose. This page adds nothing to the figures and keeps no copy of them.
How to read the result
- Combined, city and highway are the EPA’s estimates in miles per gallon for the vehicle’s main fuel. For an electric vehicle, and for one that runs on compressed natural gas, fueleconomy.gov gives the figure as MPGe, miles per gallon of gasoline equivalent.
- A second fuel, where the vehicle has one — E85 in a flexible-fuel vehicle, electricity in a plug-in hybrid — gets its own line, and a plug-in hybrid its composite MPGe.
- Electricity used is in kilowatt-hours per 100 miles.
- Tailpipe CO₂ is in grams per mile. fueleconomy.gov says that from model year 2013 it is based on EPA tests, and for earlier years it is estimated with an EPA emission factor.
- Annual fuel cost is fueleconomy.gov’s own figure. It assumes 15,000 miles a year, 55% of them in the city, and the fuel prices the site is using at the time, so it moves when prices move.
Why one model has several answers
The EPA rates a configuration, not a nameplate. A model sold with two engines and two transmissions has four ratings, and fueleconomy.gov often lists the two-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive versions as separate models. Pick the configuration that matches the car. If you do not know the engine, decode the VIN: NHTSA’s decoder usually returns the cylinders and the displacement, and the VIN Decoder’s MPG panel opens the configuration they match when exactly one fits — and says so.
Limits
fueleconomy.gov says it has revised the estimates of all 1984–2007 model year vehicles, and of some from 2011–2016, so that years can be compared; the figures here are the revised ones, which can differ from the original window sticker. Its makes and models are named its own way, not NHTSA’s. It rates vehicles in the EPA’s size classes — cars, pickups, vans, minivans, sport utility and special purpose vehicles, the heaviest under 10,000 lb gross vehicle weight rating — so a heavier truck will not be found. The estimates are the EPA’s; this page does not say what any one car will achieve.
Method
What is fetched, what is shown as given, and what is not shown.
The source
fueleconomy.gov, the EPA’s fuel economy published by Oak Ridge
National Laboratory for the Department of Energy and the EPA, read straight
from your browser (it sends Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *):
www.fueleconomy.gov/,
…/make, …/model and
…/options, then …/vehicle/<id>,
each with Accept: application/json and nothing else. Keyless,
public, US government work. Its documentation was read on 28 September 2026.
Shown as given
Every figure is fueleconomy.gov’s own, as it sent it. Two things are written here: the unit word — MPG, or MPGe for electric and natural-gas vehicles, as its documentation says — and kWh per 100 miles rounded to a tenth. An empty menu comes back as the word null and a menu of one as a single item; both are read as lists. The record’s own date (“last changed”) and the time it was read by your clock are printed under it.
Not shown
The record’s plain range field: fueleconomy.gov’s
documentation defines rangeA (“EPA range for
fuelType2”) and says nothing of range, so an electric
car’s range is withheld and the panel says so — the vehicle’s
own page at fueleconomy.gov, linked from every record, states it.
What is sent
A year, a make, a model and a configuration number, to
www.fueleconomy.gov — nothing else, and nothing through
labs.llc. “Copy a link to this model” puts the year, make and
model after a # in the address; such a link opens the same menus here and is
taken out of the address as soon as it is read. The site’s analytics
records that the tool was used, never what was chosen.
Not buying advice. Questions and corrections: labs@labs.llc.