> In a Mercedes [...] the tank is really empty as soon as the needle hits 0 Not in mine (in Germany, recent C class). It depends a bit on whether you define "r

> In a Mercedes [...] the tank is really empty as soon as the needle hits 0 Not in mine (in Germany, recent C class). It depends a bit on whether you define "reserve level" as 0 or not. On the one hand, the needle does go below reserve level all the way to physical zero, but from a UI point of view, reserve level itself is clearly what they want you to see as "running on empty". And that's what they mean in this article, too. In my car, it actually shows you in the dashboard how much range you got left based on your current driving style, too. I have a medium-power Diesel engine, so that works out to about 40 miles remaining once the warning light goes on, and that's pretty accurate. After half of that is used up, the dashboard stops showing the estimate and instead begins to flash a "fill up immediately!" message.