320d poor MPG

[Deano_BMW]

i know its all pinch of salt stuff but I'd be gutted if i bought a 320d and only got 43 from it. All of my 530D (E39 flavour and all manuals) have given me more than that and I'm not a very economical driver. Even driving mine like a loon (assuming no short journeys or lots of town work) wont see it drop below 40 and i do drive into and out of London each day as part of my 40 mile commute.

[Pingman]

Deano_BMW said:

i know its all pinch of salt stuff but I'd be gutted if i bought a 320d and only got 43 from it. All of my 530D (E39 flavour and all manuals) have given me more than that and I'm not a very economical driver. Even driving mine like a loon (assuming no short journeys or lots of town work) wont see it drop below 40 and i do drive into and out of London each day as part of my 40 mile commute.

I concur, I am indeed a little disappointed

Am off work at the mo so doing practically no mileage, think the first place I will trouble shoot will be the thermostat

[vinnie83]

My E92 320d (the 177 start-stop engine) has averaged 41mpg over the last 4 months & 7k miles.

This is ~75% motorway driving.

I was averaging 44mpg in my last 123d with the same journey split, although the 123 did all mileage in the summer and the 320 in the winter, so I'm sure that accounts for some.

I am getting the feeling that my 320d isn't doing what it is supposed to!

Both cars manual by the way.

[halo34]

06 E90 320d here - managing 45 (according to OBC) but usually see 42.

Not had it long but already thinking a 330d or 335d soon!

[Blue Oval84]

Pingman said:

I concur, I am indeed a little disappointed

Am off work at the mo so doing practically no mileage, think the first place I will trouble shoot will be the thermostat

Honestly mate, don't get too disheartened, the general consensus from most owners who use them for anything other than lots of motorway work is that 40mpg is about right on combined driving...

If you're not doing many miles, and the miles that you do cover are from cold, then I'd say that your figure is positively good.

[Patrick Bateman]

And I'd say you should get a petrol.

[sinizter]

Had my 530D for a week now.

Little town driving, mostly 50-60 mph A&B roads.

Over about 700 miles, I have got 39.4 MPG. I don't drive slowly.

[onesickpuppy]

Pingman said:

My '53 reg E46 320d (6 speed 150hp m47tu engined car) is only returning 43mpg on mixed driving, way down on official figures.

Fuel consumption (urban) 35.76 mpg
Fuel consumption (extra urban) 62.77 mpg
Fuel consumption (combined) 49.56 mpg

I'm far from flooring it either, been trying to get the best mpg I can for a while now so driving quite carefully with the throttle.

I travel about 40 miles a day with the majority dual carriageway, but have to drive out of town at either end of journey to get to dual carriageway and I do the very odd short run. So pretty mixed driving with a slight biased to dual carriageway.

Car has just ticked over 90,000 miles and has a DSH, is on 16" wheels with tyres correctly inflated and has had swirl flaps removed.

Any ideas?

OP, it's a nine year old car, there's no way it's going to as efficient as when it was new (not that you'd ever have got close to the official figures anyway). If you want 50mpg, you need to buy the new model 320d.

Also, choice of tyres, stuff in the boot (golf clubs etc?), roof racks and all sorts of things affect the economy and performance.

[hadal]

I've done 40000 Miles in my E91 320D Touring since new and have achieved 46.3 MPG. I do all sorts of driving from 10 mile dashes to 1000 mile round trips more often than not with a boot full of kit. Nothing like the claimed MPG but pretty reasonable I think?

[tim2100]

GarryA said:

This is the factory spec for my 120d Coupe

Urban (mpg) 47.9
Extra-urban (mpg) 68.9
Combined (mpg) 60.1

49-53mpg is what it does in the real world.

I get <40mpg in mine

[Guyr]

We have a 2006 320D manual and have done about 50,000 miles in it over 3 years.

The overall average displayed on the OBC is near constant 44mpg, with use being daily school runs (10 miles) and work trips (10-20 miles). We are rural though so most journeys are at reasonable speed, but all on A roads.

I did try to coax the best out of it on a longer motorway-only run doing part-throttle and holding about 65-70mph and was just able to get the OBD to show 60mpg for the journey, but it was a ridiculous drive and not practical.

Last summer we drove back from Cannes to home in one hit and through France using toll-roads, we covered 750 miles in 10 hours (including fuel/lunch stops) using cruise-control set as 90mph and it averaged 50mpg overall. I guess it only does this because the roads are so empty that for literally hours it hardly ever deviated speeds and thus required no brake/accelerate that we get on our busy UK roads.

[nickfrog]

43mpg is about normal for that car given the description of how it's used, age, mileage etc... Maybe warmer weather will bring some improvement ?

Buying a more recent car to (possibly) get to 50mpg might cost much more in depreciation than staying at 43mpg with the current car. Better the devil etc...

[Jobbo]

I had a 150k mile 2002 320td Compact as a courtesy car recently from my BMW specialist. Without trying particularly hard, I managed 54.3mpg over the course of around 100 miles. Quite a bit of motorway and dual carriageway, but I sat at 85-90mph on those, and included driving round town in Coventry. That's the same engine as the OP's car, and not *that* much lighter, so if driving for economy I'd say better than 43mpg should be well within reach.

[vinnie83]

Well I have spoken to a local BMW specialist, and he thinks the thermostat is a possible issue with my car.

I do have the symptom of the hot air cooling down when I lift off the throttle, and heating back up again when I am back on the throttle so it seems likely.

I am averaging 40mpg with this issue, I am hoping once this is sorted it will make a noticeable difference!

[OldSkoolRS]

hadal said:

I've done 40000 Miles in my E91 320D Touring since new and have achieved 46.3 MPG. I do all sorts of driving from 10 mile dashes to 1000 mile round trips more often than not with a boot full of kit. Nothing like the claimed MPG but pretty reasonable I think?

I'm pleased to read this as I'm supposed to be getting my 320d Touring delivered tomorrow to replace my current A4 2.0Tdi (snow depending ). I've only managed to get an average of 43mpg over the last 85,000 miles/3 years despite it being the lower powered 120PS model and my previous Passat 2.0Tdi (140PS) gave 44mpg. The 320d has lower emision figures than my A4 but that might not count for much, but we'll see. FWIW I carry a full boot of spare parts for my job (probably equal to two people's weight) but mostly drive along motorways and dual carriageways.

[drchris]

hi, I have a 330d, 2006, without stop/start.

This is me:



Mostly >40 mile motorway trips. Very little city driving.

Tend to cruise at 85 leptons indicated

[sinizter]

What software is that on?

[OldSkoolRS]

More importantly, where do you buy your diesel from as at £1.31 a litre that's very cheap: I aim for 15p a mile or less as that's what I can claim for my business mileage (no fuel card as it's not worth it for me), but my breakeven point is about 43mpg which I'm just about doing with the A4 and Asda fuel, which is about the cheapest I can find around these parts.

[drchris]

sinizter said:

What software is that on?

Gas Cubby for iPhone. Think I paid about a quid for it but there is a free version with limited functionality,

OldSkoolRS said:

where do you buy your diesel from as at £1.31 etc

That is the average price since Sept '09 when I got the car. It shows a graph for price over time as well, there was a huge jump from ~1.15 to ~1.37 over the 3months of early 2011, strangely it has barely moved since. I notice record profits for BP/shell etc have been announced year on year since the dawn of time... but that is another discussion for another day.

[christofmccracke]

On very similar journeys in a 320d and a 320i, the d did 42mpg and the 320 did 38mpg, the d seems to be a false economy