well you are missing one little thing. fuel vaporizes when it hits air. that vapor is actually sucked back into the handle. so you dont ever actually get all that the pump says.

 

Fuel doesn't vaporize that fast ... especially diesel fuel. I've had it all over my chest and belly once and it only came off with soap and water.

 

Well, the US owners manual states "About 13.5 gallons"...don't know why they don't know exactly since they built the thing...but that equates out to "About 51.1 liters". I suppose it holds a bit more...maybe "about 14 gallons or 52.99 liters"

 

One possible reason they do not know exactly could be due to a large percentage of people overfill their gas tanks...

I can see the calamity that would cause when someone who thinks their gas tank is 13 gallons puts in 13.5 from over filing the tank. They would probably try to sue the gas station, or post something nasty on the net saying that you should never buy gas from say Shell or BP or where ever they bought gas from because their pumps are wrong... Then some people may even think the gas station had the legal justification to take action against Chrysler. See the dirty web being woven here?

The tank it self is probably 13 gallons but with people overfilling they fill the neck of the tank too which then probably adds about half a gallon. But to save all the trouble and finger pointing they just say "About 13.5 gallons" to be safe.

 

Empty tank?

Hi!

You were probably pretty low on fuel, is my guess. I tried something similar, not too long ago. Only I didn't make it to the fuel pump ('bout 150m short when I was out of kinetic energy :icon_rolleyes, so a little push was involved...:doh:. Entirely my own fault & stupidity, for ignoring the warning signs, so I learned my lesson. Anyhow, I filled 55L of diesel into the 51L tank.

PatriotDriver

 

So it actually is about 14.5 US gallons then. Good to know.

 

A study was done over here in Canada recently which found a fairly large percentage of gas pumps were faulty and were not pumping the right amount of gas into vehicles as they claim they were (the error was typically in favour of the gas station, not the consumer). The following is based on my typically faulty memory, but I seem to believe the percentage of faulty pumps was something like 10% and the overcharge was typically about a dollar a fill.

 

Hi, this has happened to me 3 or 4 times with my 2017 Patriot 2.4L FWD. At first I thought there was something wrong with the pump, but after monitoring the odometer, I noticed I was able to drive almost 100 kms more everytime this happened.

 

Besides being the size of a thimble...

My experience with cars is that the size they state is what it is when they have it programmed to hit "empty", and once you hit "empty" you typically have between 1-2 gallons of gas (anywhere between 25 and 50 miles worth).

The reasoning for this, at least what my guess is, is that 1) the fuel senders are not super accurate, so it accounts for slop in them, 2) lawsuit avoidance, that people will drive it to the very edge of empty and if they didn't get exactly 13.5 gallons, they'll be unhappy, and 3) accounting for those people who drive to the bitter end, and will strand themselves on the side of the highway, giving them hopefully enough buffer to get to a gas station.

 

I don't know if VW still offers this, but back in the '60s the bug had a reserve feature, so if you ran out of gas you could switch to reserve and have enough gas left to make it to the next town.

 

I've only seen that on motorcycles. all of mine have had reserves on them. I feel like that's what hitting empty is, you hitting a reserve.