Discussion
Maracus said:
Electrics not for me said:
Electrics are a stop gap and the downsides are starting to be realised, plenty of them too.
Stop gap to what? Genuinely interested to see what you think is a genuine replacement?
Anyway, absolute nonsense. He may not agree with it but there future is BEV now, it's cast in iron, the majority of world is aligned to it both monitarily and politically now. It's a done deal. But back to topic, the fact the BEV is the future doesn't mean a good diesel isn't often the correct choice today. Certainly a better choice than PHEV, they really were a stopgap solution.
TheDeuce said:
Asking for input from a chap that was has joined a forum with that username.... I think that level of bias prevents useful debate
Anyway, absolute nonsense. He may not agree with it but there future is BEV now, it's cast in iron, the majority of world is aligned to it both monitarily and politically now. It's a done deal. But back to topic, the fact the BEV is the future doesn't mean a good diesel isn't often the correct choice today. Certainly a better choice than PHEV, they really were a stopgap solution.
Agree completely. Anyway, absolute nonsense. He may not agree with it but there future is BEV now, it's cast in iron, the majority of world is aligned to it both monitarily and politically now. It's a done deal. But back to topic, the fact the BEV is the future doesn't mean a good diesel isn't often the correct choice today. Certainly a better choice than PHEV, they really were a stopgap solution.
PHEVs are the stop gap.
TheDeuce said:
My mind went straight to diesel, and the F30 330D is about the pinnacle of what a diesel engine can be imo. You'll get 40mpg all day long almost regardless of driving style and it'll do 60 in 5 seconds. I had one, and followed up with a 430d GC (four door coupe) which was actually even better to drive and even more practical.
I really can't say enough positive things about BMW's straight six diesels. They even sound nice and rev freely. Witchcraft!
I'm in a similar conundrum here; working from home pretty much full time, so it's mostly longer journeys I'm doing. Torn between F30 330d, 330e, and 330i (or the 340i..); so my research so far seems to have led me to these conclusions:I really can't say enough positive things about BMW's straight six diesels. They even sound nice and rev freely. Witchcraft!
Petrol:
35mpg-ish on a run (perhaps nudging 40mpg if you include some of the average 50/60 sections too), worse around town.
Unlikely to depreciate quite as savagely as the diesel might
Diesel:
high-40s, low-50s on a run, but fuel is more expensive than petrol, plus potential for greater depreciation due to diesel's fall from grace; the hidden running cost!
Hybrid:
Great MPG around town, or potential for free/no cost local running on battery. But on a longer motorway run, the hybrid is less able to assist & its extra weight becomes a hindrance, hence mpg settles down to similar-ish to the petrol. But with the added Sword of Damocles of the potential for bigger bills; there's lots more to go wrong: will the fuel savings be enough to offset the potential for costs later on in the vehicle's life? (See also: the same arguments made for diesel MPG advantages being eliminated by DPF / injector / dual-mass flywheel costs).
Are my predictions and thoughts broadly correct? Or am I wildly far off the mark? Mostly my journeys are either local bimbling around the city (rarely), but a fair few 200+ mile journeys.
Maracus said:
TheDeuce said:
Asking for input from a chap that was has joined a forum with that username.... I think that level of bias prevents useful debate
Anyway, absolute nonsense. He may not agree with it but there future is BEV now, it's cast in iron, the majority of world is aligned to it both monitarily and politically now. It's a done deal. But back to topic, the fact the BEV is the future doesn't mean a good diesel isn't often the correct choice today. Certainly a better choice than PHEV, they really were a stopgap solution.
Agree completely. Anyway, absolute nonsense. He may not agree with it but there future is BEV now, it's cast in iron, the majority of world is aligned to it both monitarily and politically now. It's a done deal. But back to topic, the fact the BEV is the future doesn't mean a good diesel isn't often the correct choice today. Certainly a better choice than PHEV, they really were a stopgap solution.
PHEVs are the stop gap.
I imagine the poster mentioned will regale us with his insights into synthetic fuels and hydrogen if he does bother to come back. Strikes me very much as a hit and run type though so won't hold my breath.
Be interesting to hear just where he was driving that Taycan to get the efficiency down to approx 0.5 mi/kWh by my estimation as well..
blueacid said:
I'm in a similar conundrum here; working from home pretty much full time, so it's mostly longer journeys I'm doing. Torn between F30 330d, 330e, and 330i (or the 340i..); so my research so far seems to have led me to these conclusions:
Straight choice between the d and i for the reasons you mention. The added complexity and weight of the e are only worth having if you are making big savings on BIK with a company car and it's under warranty IMHO. For a personal purchase of a 3+ year old second hand car I'd avoid the hybrid like the plague for your use, do some more calculations between petrol and diesel costs and then have a test drive and see which you prefer.Edited by SWoll on Wednesday 3rd August 12:38
blueacid said:
TheDeuce said:
My mind went straight to diesel, and the F30 330D is about the pinnacle of what a diesel engine can be imo. You'll get 40mpg all day long almost regardless of driving style and it'll do 60 in 5 seconds. I had one, and followed up with a 430d GC (four door coupe) which was actually even better to drive and even more practical.
I really can't say enough positive things about BMW's straight six diesels. They even sound nice and rev freely. Witchcraft!
I'm in a similar conundrum here; working from home pretty much full time, so it's mostly longer journeys I'm doing. Torn between F30 330d, 330e, and 330i (or the 340i..); so my research so far seems to have led me to these conclusions:I really can't say enough positive things about BMW's straight six diesels. They even sound nice and rev freely. Witchcraft!
Petrol:
35mpg-ish on a run (perhaps nudging 40mpg if you include some of the average 50/60 sections too), worse around town.
Unlikely to depreciate quite as savagely as the diesel might
Diesel:
high-40s, low-50s on a run, but fuel is more expensive than petrol, plus potential for greater depreciation due to diesel's fall from grace; the hidden running cost!
Hybrid:
Great MPG around town, or potential for free/no cost local running on battery. But on a longer motorway run, the hybrid is less able to assist & its extra weight becomes a hindrance, hence mpg settles down to similar-ish to the petrol. But with the added Sword of Damocles of the potential for bigger bills; there's lots more to go wrong: will the fuel savings be enough to offset the potential for costs later on in the vehicle's life? (See also: the same arguments made for diesel MPG advantages being eliminated by DPF / injector / dual-mass flywheel costs).
Are my predictions and thoughts broadly correct? Or am I wildly far off the mark? Mostly my journeys are either local bimbling around the city (rarely), but a fair few 200+ mile journeys.
Pica-Pica said:
Get what you want, but I haven’t seen 6cylinder diesel BMWs depreciating more than anything else.
He's not sure what he wants, hence the purpose of the post I'd imagine?Ref diesel depreciation, it's been steadily rising for about 5 years apparently and is unlikely to improve moving towards 2030. Many drivers with efficiency at the top of their list of requirements will be looking at BEV I'd guess?
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/motoring-is...
SWoll said:
He's not sure what he wants, hence the purpose of the post I'd imagine?
Ref diesel depreciation, it's been steadily rising for about 5 years apparently and is unlikely to improve moving towards 2030. Many drivers with efficiency at the top of their list of requirements will be looking at BEV I'd guess?
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/motoring-is...
Absolutely; was thinking precisely that - the efficiency-minded will likely be stepping back from diesel; so I suspect that while the i or the d could be had for similar money today, it's what they'll be worth in future that (faintly) concerns me.Ref diesel depreciation, it's been steadily rising for about 5 years apparently and is unlikely to improve moving towards 2030. Many drivers with efficiency at the top of their list of requirements will be looking at BEV I'd guess?
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/motoring-is...
My last two vehicles have been diesel, but I'm quite tempted by a last hurrah; hence the 340i thought.. or 440i!
But yes, it sounds like there's unanimity on the matter; the plug-in hybrid F30 330e isn't really worth it unless your driving style happens to absolutely suit it.
blueacid said:
But yes, it sounds like there's unanimity on the matter; the plug-in hybrid F30 330e isn't really worth it unless your driving style happens to absolutely suit it.
Even then I'm not convinced. They're a tax dodge, plain and simple. The majority of owners never even bother to charge them based on what I've read on here over the years so are just carrying around extra weight and complexity for no functional purpose.TheDeuce said:
economy figures can be wildly inaccurate when the entire story is made up in the first place
Quite. I don't think people realise just how difficult it would be to drive a car with that level of performance on the public road in order to get those kind of figures A quick squirt of throttle and you are in license losing territory, good luck sustaining that over any distance. Having put some miles on my 300e (2019 model) on a longer journey the electrics make minimal difference as most of the journey is on the engine.
If you use the motor to recharge the batteries actively it takes MPG from 50 ish to 25 on the motorway - Its just not worth it.
It does run nicely upto motorway speeds on the electric motor but its runs out to fast to be really useful! It is also good in town for local errands and give a bit of extra kick.
Biggest issue is that it has a tiny fuel tank (40lt) which ends up giving me 300-350 miles between fill ups which is rubbish!!
My old Audi 3.0BiTdi was a better overall car - long range, MPG not far off the BMW and better shove.
Next car is a Tesla Model Y which is due to arrive in the next couple on months - I dont like it particularly but the tax breaks are worth it and the charging network is the best currently.
If you use the motor to recharge the batteries actively it takes MPG from 50 ish to 25 on the motorway - Its just not worth it.
It does run nicely upto motorway speeds on the electric motor but its runs out to fast to be really useful! It is also good in town for local errands and give a bit of extra kick.
Biggest issue is that it has a tiny fuel tank (40lt) which ends up giving me 300-350 miles between fill ups which is rubbish!!
My old Audi 3.0BiTdi was a better overall car - long range, MPG not far off the BMW and better shove.
Next car is a Tesla Model Y which is due to arrive in the next couple on months - I dont like it particularly but the tax breaks are worth it and the charging network is the best currently.
SWoll said:
TheDeuce said:
economy figures can be wildly inaccurate when the entire story is made up in the first place
Quite. I don't think people realise just how difficult it would be to drive a car with that level of performance on the public road in order to get those kind of figures A quick squirt of throttle and you are in license losing territory, good luck sustaining that over any distance. 
k out of this for twenty minutes straight'Still seems a tall story imo!
Pica-Pica said:
Get what you want, but I haven’t seen 6cylinder diesel BMWs depreciating more than anything else.
Diesels are a weird future proposition. It does seem that ICE in general will become less desirable to hang on to as future values will likely crumble as the bans and subsequent headlines draw nearer. It's not that they won't still be useful, it's that potential new owners won't want to pay much because they'll be worried about another 3-5 years down the line when it could be obsolete.On the other hand, for quite some time a small % of people will struggle with BEV so particularly good ICE cars could hold their value quite well, some even perhaps becoming sought after.
A 330/335d in estate or 430/435d in GC are probably good candidates. They're spectacular cars if you need to tick just about all boxes with one vehicle. ICE SUV's I'm not so sure about, they're cars bought largely because they're on trend - but those same buyers won't see a diesel as 'on trend' in several years time. Electric is on trend.
Just checked if my 330e F30 has had an MOT yet (handed back when my replacement i3 turned up in 2019).
2016 model which needed an MOT in June 2019. It's still SORN.
Did 55k-ish miles in 2.5 years. Got an average of 60mpg with charging it at home. Agree with a few on here it was a compromised vehicle for the BIK. Tank was too small. Battery was too small. Boot was too small.
As a comfortable company car on salary sacrifice? Brilliant. ZF autobox was nice. Good enough to waft up and down the motorway.
Had some problems with the fuelling system. Had some iDrive system problems. All fixed on warranty, apart from the issue when they replaced bits of the fuelling system (as the tank had a vacuum system?) and made the interior stink of petrol the week before it was due to go back.
Did wonder if they were waiting to sell it on a 'normalised' mileage of 10k/year which would've been 2021. So now I'm wondering why it's still SORN.
Colleague had the Passat GTE, that had the same, albeit less so, compromises that the 330e had. I'd say if anything look at the diesel MB hybrid people have already spoken about.
Unless most of your trips are sub 30 miles I'd say the cost and complexity and borkage potential it'd be a vehicle I'd avoid buying used.
2016 model which needed an MOT in June 2019. It's still SORN.
Did 55k-ish miles in 2.5 years. Got an average of 60mpg with charging it at home. Agree with a few on here it was a compromised vehicle for the BIK. Tank was too small. Battery was too small. Boot was too small.
As a comfortable company car on salary sacrifice? Brilliant. ZF autobox was nice. Good enough to waft up and down the motorway.
Had some problems with the fuelling system. Had some iDrive system problems. All fixed on warranty, apart from the issue when they replaced bits of the fuelling system (as the tank had a vacuum system?) and made the interior stink of petrol the week before it was due to go back.
Did wonder if they were waiting to sell it on a 'normalised' mileage of 10k/year which would've been 2021. So now I'm wondering why it's still SORN.
Colleague had the Passat GTE, that had the same, albeit less so, compromises that the 330e had. I'd say if anything look at the diesel MB hybrid people have already spoken about.
Unless most of your trips are sub 30 miles I'd say the cost and complexity and borkage potential it'd be a vehicle I'd avoid buying used.
SORN fof 3 years? Just shows you how difficult they must be to sell on the second hand market and, when you're having to have thngs fixed in the first 3 years under warranty you can see why. A horribly complicated and in most use cases pointless short term solution that burns more fuel than the standard ICE car throughout its life dragging all that weight around.
SWoll said:
SORN fof 3 years? Just shows you how difficult they must be to sell on the second hand market and, when you're having to have thngs fixed in the first 3 years under warranty you can see why. A horribly complicated and in most use cases pointless short term solution that burns more fuel than the standard ICE car throughout its life dragging all that weight around.
Yep it's just been sat in a field. It was fully working, just been serviced, no faults etc. Mint condition when it left my hands.Oh I got a lot of miles on EV, especially trying to save the battery for when I got to somewhere urban, always tried to arrive at a charger with 1% left etc. But it could definitely have done with 2-3x the battery capacity - it was designed and built before the capacities were there, I guess to meet demand of company car driving and lowering the co2 of the fleet they sold. It never got anywhere near it's blended 134.5mpg was utter tosh. 55k miles, not one tank did I manage to average anything over 65mpg. A run to London and back (220ish miles) I'd average 50mpg if lucky.
You'd have to have the profile of never having maybe 1 round trip above 15 miles on the whole tank, charging every day and wherever possible, to get anywhere near that 134.5mpg.
The 1.6 Bluemotion Golf it replaced got better MPG (I even got 88mpg once when it was stated to do 83mpg..), and that's still going. But admittedly that was harder to drive efficiently.
The 116d ED I had was written off.
The 2019 i3 120Ah I handed back last year got it's MOT in March this year so that's still on the road with 50k on the clock
Admittedly after again a lot of warranty work whilst in my possession.I dread to think what a new 7kWh battery pack costs from BMW for the 330e. Tesla's batteries work out at £500/kWh. Mercedes 350e battery is something like £1500-2000/kWh according to a recent video by TeslaBjorn
Yep. No way I'd be brave enough to run an out of warranty hybrid, they're a bank account emptying accident waiting to happen IMHO.
Out of interest, what went wrong with your i3? We have a 120ah for a year and 20k miles back in 2019 and it never mised a beat. Considering buying a used one at some point so be good to know.
Out of interest, what went wrong with your i3? We have a 120ah for a year and 20k miles back in 2019 and it never mised a beat. Considering buying a used one at some point so be good to know.
SWoll said:
Yep. No way I'd be brave enough to run an out of warranty hybrid, they're a bank account emptying accident waiting to happen IMHO.
Out of interest, what went wrong with your i3? We have a 120ah for a year and 20k miles back in 2019 and it never mised a beat. Considering buying a used one at some point so be good to know.
So it was on 48K in March 2022. Got it I think March 2019, they held It for the '19' plate. as it was ready late feb 2019.Out of interest, what went wrong with your i3? We have a 120ah for a year and 20k miles back in 2019 and it never mised a beat. Considering buying a used one at some point so be good to know.
Had the ARBs replaced due to excess knocking about a year in. Took it back the next day as the knocking was still there. Was steering fine, tires were still on the first set. It was just.... very very noisy.
They looked at it again and said oh, the NSF shock has in fact entirely ruptured. We can't release the car back to you and we now need to keep it 3 days whilst we get a replacement. I'm surprised I didn't notice wallowing/bad rebound.
I asked how the **** that was missed the day before when replacing the ARB and the drop links. They weren't sure. Suddenly a courtesy car was available because of this.
A few times the car steered to the left violently under 30mph after setting off. So much so I pulled over and checked visual alignment and that I suddenly didn't have a puncture. Never kerbed a wheel on it.
Got back in and as soon as you drove at > 30mph it steered true (so not a physical tracking problem). Went up and down a 40mph road and could prove it would do it / stop doing it at the 30mph threshold. As described by this chap here - https://www.reddit.com/r/BMWi3/comments/o4n292/has... )
Edit : And here https://www.mybmwi3.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1641... - so it's been a long known, infrequently occurring issue.
That probably happened to me 5 or so times. I even pulled over the first few times and stopped the car to check all the wheels were looking straight and true - they were. Getting back in the car having put it in P and driving off it did it again. Only locking car completely seemed to cure this. Took it to BMW to ask them to look at it. "No fault found". So it's some sort of distinct software issue. Whenever it did it the trigger point was under 30mph, always pulling to the left. You'd literally have to steer a good 10-15 degrees to the right to keep the car straight.
I couldn't correlate anything to cause this. Parking it TDC on the steering. parking it full lock either way. Parking it at any steering angle. Parking it after reversing it with those same steering angles. So that kind of threw my confidence in their software. I nearly wanted to get a friend to video internal and externally the car doing it when it happened, but never managed to line that up.
That behaviour only ever appeared after getting in and turning the car on. It never appeared in the middle of a journey. When it happened it was manageable but annoying - and you wondered if you were counter steering and possibly crabbing down the road.
Driver's seat was replaced due to the stupid seatbelt points wearing the side bolster down past the leather in the loft interior about a year in. I had to sit in the car and show the service guy that it was definitely the design of the seatbelt and it's lower attaching point that was doing this, not me wearing jeans etc. They replaced that under warranty. So you'd want to get a seatbelt pad for the lower part of the seatbelt if you want to keep those bolsters intact - it's a design flaw.
I agree they're a lovely car otherwise. Drive like a go-kart. Lots of space inside for it's physical footprint. Efficient as heck, I was getting 6.2m/kWh at times. The rear doors are a bit of a PITA for passengers in car parks. I'd happy have another as a low cost company car where everything's maintained. I would not want to own one past a warranty if having it as a daily and owning privately. Maybe as a local runaround and have another car if needed.
It ate rear tires far more than the fronts. The stupid sizes are expensive - I worked out it cost 3-4x more in tires per mile than the electricity it used. I think in the 2.5 years It had nearly £900 in tires.
The three BMWs I've had, all from new, since 2012 have had their litany of errors (like the entire iDrive and all the injectors replaced...). They've nice cars to drive when they work. My highly tuned mk4 Supras were more reliable tbh.
Edit 2 : I'd buy an i3 2nd hand over an ID3. 330e vs ID3? The ID3. Just.
Edited by caseys on Thursday 4th August 16:52
Edited by caseys on Thursday 4th August 17:02
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