White dot on digital fuel gauge, WTH is it?!

Hey everyone, I have been to the depths of the internet and back trying to figure out what is going on here, not to mention the dealership was no help. It's a white dot that appears on the digital gas gauge when I have a destination active in the navigation. The vehicle is a '13 550i picked up in November. My first assumption was the it was telling me how much fuel it would use to get to the destination, which would make sense. If the white dot was indicating you would need fuel before you would arrive at the destination, then you could plan accordingly. But, sometimes its closer to the full side when its just a 20/25 mile trip. I dont understand!

Hopefully y'all can help. You can see the mysterious white dot closer to empty just to the right of '0'.

It is the amount of range required to complete your trip...

Set your cruise control and the dot will move to the distance you have to go on the fuel gauge. You can see if you will need to gas up before arriving and at what point. Cool feature on long road trips.

Thanks Chuck W! Going to try that tomorrow morning.

Damn, I meant "set the navigation", not the cruise control. Ugh...

Sent from my ADR6425LVW using Bimmer App

Originally Posted by daughej

Hey everyone, I have been to the depths of the internet and back trying to figure out what is going on here, not to mention the dealership was no help. It's a white dot that appears on the digital gas gauge when I have a destination active in the navigation. The vehicle is a '13 550i picked up in November. My first assumption was the it was telling me how much fuel it would use to get to the destination, which would make sense. If the white dot was indicating you would need fuel before you would arrive at the destination, then you could plan accordingly. But, sometimes its closer to the full side when its just a 20/25 mile trip. I dont understand!

Hopefully y'all can help. You can see the mysterious white dot closer to empty just to the right of '0'.

As "the nice lady" at the Welt explained, the dot (could be White, could be Orange, based on daylight) appears when you have a destination active in the nav system, and is trying to show whether you have enough range to make it to your destination. The range varies, based on your fuel consumption, and decreases as you consume fuel. So, over time, your range bar shortens bringing the end of the range bar closer to the dot. With a far off destination, it is possible for the dot to render to the right of your current range, or perhaps not render at all (too far still).

So, in your picture, you only need a smidgen of your remaining range to make it to your destination.

Also, if you haven't already noticed, when you get down to your fuel reserve, the range bar and dot turn yellow-ish.

wow, learned something new. danke.

Thank you, SimiClyde! I have been wondering the same thing. I've never seen the dot move towards the right side because the few times I've tried it was for a short distance with almost a full tank. Definitely good to know how this works, though. Like Chuck said, a good feature for long road trips!

FYI, if you look at the Route Preview function in the nav system and have a long trip (or not much fuel), the car will suggest when to refuel along the way.

Originally Posted by MBrown1003

FYI, if you look at the Route Preview function in the nav system and have a long trip (or not much fuel), the car will suggest when to refuel along the way.

Really??? THat's awesome.

Something else I just noticed... have you ever watched your fuel gauge while gassing up with the ignition on?

Originally Posted by JPetrillo

Something else I just noticed... have you ever watched your fuel gauge while gassing up with the ignition on?

What's it do?

The gauge and mileage count increases in real time as the tank is filling up.