2012 528i xDrive: real-life fuel consumption?

Originally Posted by MoldCAD

Thank you, @bmguy, for this first-hand experience write-up!

I agree completely with your points on the ASS - when active, it takes sort of a skill to watch the traffic lights and the car in front of you, and either slow down earlier and coast (with your foot on the brake pedal) so that just before you'd need to come to a halt, the lights would change - or, should the situation look like it's going to be a longer wait, get close to the preceding car in a smooth, one go and only then depress the pedal completely (I hope you know what I mean - sorry for my English).

As to the 528ix' performance - I also agree that it's quite good. When pressed hard, the car accelerates almost as easily as my old good E46 330i, even though the 5-er is almost 400 kgs heavier.

One thing I don't like so much though is how low the rpm can drop with the AT; with my driving style it's often necessary to manually shift a couple of gears up when the moment comes for quick overtaking and alike. I can almost feel the engine laboring at too low rpm if I don't do that, and before the AT reacts - shouldn't be that way in a car of this class. Of course, one can always stick to SPORT mode which will not allow such low rpm, but - apart from those moments - it might be unnecessary, and certainly does increase the consumption.

One thing in your post made me interested - are you saying it makes sense to drive aggressively and in ECO Pro mode? Could you elaborate, please?

TIA,

Piotr

Sorry the "drive aggressively" for Eco mode maybe doesn't translate the same... It's a common English term that can mean several things, but in this case I meant to "try very hard" to drive like Eco mode likes you to... Hope that clears it up a little... Your English is very good so need to apologize...

It does seem like the transmission tuning is very much in favour of fuel savings so holding gears and early shifting up a gear is normal for this car.

I drive a 550 with the sport transmission, and in sport mode the shifts are tuned very nice for zipping in and out of traffic, however it disables the 8 th gear which I wish it would not as I still do hiway driving and would like it if the 8 th gear would kick in after a sustained travel in 7

Great cars, it my second BMW, I had an m6 convertible before this, fantastic car, but not like my 550 ... I sold it expecting to buy an i8 when it was available but I think it may be more money that I want, or even can spend on a car... Wish I had kept the m6 in the mean time... That cars v10 would drink gas like some of my closest friends drink a vodka! (If you know what I mean )

Enjoy the car....

SO "driving aggressively in ECO mode" means to religiously stick to the ECO mode driving manners.

Point Taken.

Originally Posted by Ralph1201

SO "driving aggressively in ECO mode" means to religiously stick to the ECO mode driving manners.

Point Taken.

If you have not had a chance to do this - its like watching paint dry... once should really give it a try. My opinion on eco mode is there is so much work for the driver to do to keep the acceleration curve efficient and braking/coasting etc that it feels like going to to a job you hate every morning.... I would gladly take a second job at a drive-through if needed to find a few bucks just to stay out of eco-pro mode.

(not because of the power loss etc, but just the amount of work and thought I the driver have to provided to make eco-pro work, it should be a way more active technology and do more things on its own. Such as smoothing out the acceleration curve as a simple example)

As I mentioned in another thread, now that I started to use my 528ix "normally" (after the short break-in period), my average is even higher at 9.4 l/100km. This is 10% city, 90% outside - of which less than half is motorways (up to 200, but usually 160-180 kmh), more than half- regular single line roads with heavy traffic (lots of overtaking with full acceleration; 140km/h).

So, it's more or less the same as my good old I6 330i would take; the only comfort being that the F10 is considerably heavier, so the N54 I had in the E46 would probably need more that that....

PS. The other advantage is of course what I mentioned in this thread's OP - the N20 F10 is at least 25% less expensive here, than otherwise identical F10 with over the 2.0l engine stroke.

OK guys - so having now over 5,000 km on the clock, I'm happy to inform you that - considering how big and heavy the F10 is (compared to my previous vehicle - the 330i E46) - with the same aggressive driving style it is just a little less gas-thirsty... With the 330i, I used to get some 9.5 l/100km (24.76 MPG) long time average (with some 25% city - 75% highway distribution). My N20 528xi can go as low as 7.4 l/100km (31.79 MPG)!

But of course - doing given amount of work requires certain amount of energy, and even the BMW Twinpower turbo is not going to change the laws of physics; as an example I can quote the consumption during a 2 hour long motorway driving at 190-200 km/h: it's as low (or high?) as 11 l/100km (21.38 MPG). How about that?

I thought I would update you on some numbers I was able to achieve on my 550xi for the purpose of comparing. I have the Dinan stage II flash also if that matters to the fuel use

I just completed a 600 km trip 300 each way with some very minor idling at the USA/Canada border and then back home

The cars reported fuel use at the end of the trip was 9.9L/100 the average speed was 122km/h

The outside air temp was -5 degrees for the whole 6 hour trip give or take 2 degrees.

I did pass a few cars here and there and at times I did manage to get the car up to speeds I will not post here.

At the end of the day I was pretty happy with the 9.9

Nice!

I wonder what your average would be with some 25% of city traffic?

But overall, I do miss some power margin with my 4-cylinder bimmer; I always believed any device - be it a car or a hi-fi amplifier - performs best if not pushed to the max; my car is unfortunately - yours doesn't need to be. This is why you paid more for it, after all

Well the truth is I wanted I 535 but once I added the features I wanted the cost difference was so small to move the 550 that I just did it... fuel is still very affordable here in Alberta and Canada in general (but not as cheap as the USA).

I had an MB ML320cdi for a winter car before this and a M6 for the summers so the 550 was a good compromise of a 6 cylinder diesel and a 10 cylinder petro engine! (the M6 had me almost buy my own gas station half way to the office to save a few bucks)

My drive today is (I'm guessing) about 65% at most and maybe as low as 50% city driving and I'm getting the 12.8 so I would guess 11.5 approx if the city driving we to drop to 25 percent... I would however have no way to test this as that would mean changing were I live to get more freeway driving so I would be limited to guessing only...

This is my first v8 - as I have always had v4/v6, gas and the v6 diesel and the one time I had the V10 gas. The biggest two benefits I see to the v8 are the feeling of acceleration and as you also noted my comfort with the engine working less and hence should last me longer...


I had a month long trip in Europe the summer of 2011 and I had a nissan path finder for a rental - and I can tell you if I lived in Europe I would for sure be owning a 4 cylinder.. that is some crazy costs for fuel. My cousin had a newer A6 v4 and when I borrowed it was an excellent power delivery. I would not have any issues with a v4 in Europe based on capital cost differences, fuel costs and frankly far superior road system so that merging etc on high speed doesn't require as much power to get it to the same speed as the traffic your merging into (based on Canadian freeway designs, some USA cities have done a way better job on this - we Canadians just don't have enough people to build the kinds of roads I have seen in Europe and the USA but some of cities are just as congested)....


At the end of the day, love the car you have - they make so many different kids because there is so many different needs....

After putting on 1100 miles in my 2012 528i XDrive, I have tracked 28.5 (avg number between my idrive log and my pencil and paper log) MPG driving mostly highway in the Feb - April time frame in CT USA. Avg temp was around 36 F I believe for this time. The MPG was the key factor in choosing this model over a 535 or a 550. Premium, technology, cold weather pkges.