170 TDI DSG fuel consumption

[steve184]

Right, i've had my car for a couple of weeks now and have done a couple of hundred miles in it - but if my DIS is telling the truth im a little dissapointed at the fuel economy. I'm hovering around low 30's seemingly which is not at all diesel-esque! Now to be honest most of my driving is the worst type of driving its mostly round town, traffic stuff. A couple of times over the last couple of weeks (on really traffic heavy days i must admit) i've got to work and looked down to 25mpg!!!!!! WTF???? I've had an A3 before and that was a 140 TDI manual and with my type of driving i used to get overall 40.4mpg (as shown on DIS - althought think i calculated once and this came down to actual 38-39mpg. OK so the way i looked at it is this, audis figures list a difference in urban fuel economy between a 140 manual and 170 DSG as about 3mpg - so by my calculations i expected to get around 37 (as show on DIS) but im not im getting about 31 ish. the 140 had about 80% of the power of the 170 but it seems that this means the 170 has 80% of the fuel economy also! (by the way this isnt driving it hard either this is driving quite softly!)

Does this sound right? Anyone else with a 170 (who has also had a 140) can compare and have found quite a difference between the two)

 

[h5djr]

When I collected my new 170, for some reason the DIS computer did not work at all. Gave all the normal DIS functions but no computer reading. It went in on Wednesday to have this sorted. All they did was 'recoded' the dash. I suspect what happened is that I asked for a couple of things to be recoded before I collected the car and in doing this they accidentally switch off the computer functions.

Well every thing is now working as it should so I will keep an eye on my consumption readings and let you know in a week or so.

 

[roadrunner]

Steve I have the same engine but quattro instead of DSG. I can't say I'm exactly pleased with my fuel economy either. Certainly not matching up to the blurb either (DIS or fill to fill calculations). Similar figures to yourself at the start but it is improving. Moved from low 30's to mid 30's over the first few thousand miles and not driving especially hard. Similar type of driving too. Is that what happens with diesels... do they improve over time? Think I read somewhere that it takes 9000 miles to get to optimum fuel consumption.

 

[motorbikez]

My sportback tdi 170 S line has now got 618 miles on it and is showing 38.2 mpg on function 2 of the DIS which is what its averaged over the 618 miles.Which is reasonbly good you will probably find after about 5-6000 miles your mpg figures will be up 7-8 mpg better than now.

My previous tdi 140 a3 averaged 47mpg athough when I 1st got it it was only averaging 38mpg which I was dissapointed with but dealer said after 6000 miles mpg should be a lot better which it was.

 

[Macduff]

I haven't driven an A3 with this engine but I have driven two A4 170 Quattros. The first one showed an average of 32-33 mpg over the couple of days I had it. This one had around 2k miles on it IIRC

The second one was just this week and after a 15 mile trip on dual carriageway it was around the 37-38 mark which is nearer what I would expect. This one had less than 500 miles on the clock.

From various posts on a number of different forums you can expect it to improve steadily until around the 20k mark when running-in seems to be complete.

 

[coupe-se]

I've just covered over 9k in mine. We seem to average about 45mpg as a whole. I don't tend to take too much notice of the DIS and use the petrol receipts to calculate my true mpg figures.

With a mixture of motorway and fast B road driving we always get 450 miles to a tank (ie re-fill when the refual light comes on). If we do a long motorway trip at 70 -80mph max we get 600miles to a tank. I recently did a alot of city centre driving over the course of a tank of diesel and still got 400miles out of it.

Must say I did read with some sceptism about people getting 55-60mpg+ with their TDi's before buying my TDi 170. I guess if you drive at a steady 60mph on a motorway those figures are theoretically possible, but in reality that never happens ....... not with me anyway.

 

[steve184]

well my old 140 nevr really changed over the time i had it - and i sold it with 11,000 miles on - it just did the same with 10 miles on as it did with 11000 or at least i didnt notice any small difference - so i would expect this to be the same???? on a trip basis the worst i ever saw on my 140 DIS display was one day when i literally did 6 miles in 1st gear stop start and i got to work and it showed 34 i think.... had a similar trip the other day in the new one and it showed 25!! thats nearly 10mpg less! (whereas audi say its 3mpg less???) dont know where they get these figures from. See im not sure the DSG is making it worse too even though audi say it supposed to improve fuel economy?? I find when driving economically in D it doesnt change up quick enough ie it revs to almost 3,000 just with light acceleration which is not fuel efficient... in my 140 manual i used to change just over 2,000 when i wanted to drive economically

 

[PJLarge]

Think I read somewhere that it takes 9000 miles to get to optimum fuel consumption.

Lots of people seem to think this, but I've found it to be a load of tosh. I bought my 170 brand new and I've kept a log of all fuel that's gone in it. Boring I know, but I wanted to do this out of curiosity to see if they really do get better over time.

Fast forward to today and 12000 miles on the clock. My average in the DIS shows 42.7 and the actual calculated from the manual log shows 42.2 over the entire mileage. There have been slight varitations over the mileage, but to be honest the MPG is pretty much the same now as it was with 50 miles on the clock.

My car is a DSG and I drive approx 100 miles a day on the return commute. It's all dual carriageway and I am usually somewhere between 50 and 90 MPH.

I've tried weeks driving it as a manual and weeks driving it as a normal auto and it doesn't really make any difference. I have a range of 530 miles to a tank.

I don't think the 170 is that bad on fuel, but wouldn't say it was great either. What I have noticed is that if I do short journeys around town, I can see the fuel gauge move as much as it would if I did a 50 mile run to work. For the kind of driving I do, I'm sure I could be not too much worse off with a 2.0 TFSI instead.

Phil.

 

[Vertigo1]

Steve, I'm seeing exactly the same as you - basically nowhere near the economy I used to get out of my old 140.

Car now has 3000 miles on it and it's getting a bit better but still a mile away from the old 140. I'm rather unimpressed tbh and, if it doesn't improve in the next few thousand miles, this will change to being annoyed and I'll be writing some letters to Audi to let them how how disappointed I am.

If I wanted petrol economy I'd have bought a petrol. At the rate this is going I might as well have had the 2.0T

 

[coupe-se]

Dare i ask what people who drive 2.0T cars get in the real world in terms of fuel economy??? OR Do I not want to know?

My last vehicle was a new D40 Navara which weighed nearly twice that of my A3, had a 2.5 TDi engine with approx 170ps on tap. I never got less than 30mpg from it and on motorway runs (70-80mph) got high 30's from it.

I was expecting alot more from my A3, especially reading the official Audi figures.

 

[mfspen]

Dare i ask what people who drive 2.0T cars get in the real world in terms of fuel economy??? OR Do I not want to know?..

Here's my figures for the 2.0T :-

Short 10 min journey to work - 28-30mpg
Long (60 mile) run on A roads - 36-38mpg
Constant 70mph on M-way - 36mpg
Constant 80mph on M-way - 34mpg

 

[coupe-se]

Here's my figures for the 2.0T :-

Short 10 min journey to work - 28-30mpg
Long (60 mile) run on A roads - 36-38mpg
Constant 70mph on M-way - 36mpg
Constant 80mph on M-way - 34mpg

Cheers!!:icon_thumright:

How heavy footed are you?? Are you a gentle or brisk driver ...... I never thrash my cars but do drive in a brisk manner.

 

[mfspen]

Cheers!!:icon_thumright:

How heavy footed are you?? Are you a gentle or brisk driver ...... I never thrash my cars but do drive in a brisk manner.

I get a move on, but tend not to rev the engine hard, as there is no need. The 2.0T can be driven more like diesel as it is so torquey.

 

[Staz]

Dare i ask what people who drive 2.0T cars get in the real world in terms of fuel economy???

If you take it easy it's amazingly economical:

 

[steve184]

hmmm my thoughts exactly - wondering if i should have gone for a 2.0T too. I was happy to accept audis claimed 3mpg less on fuel economy, but in the real world im not getting this - yes i can get 37mpg out of it but i have to conectrate on driving it so softly to do this - and this is the reason i got a diesel - so i could drive normally and not worry about fuel consumption (as i did with my 140 that was great i was never afraid to floor it as it would still return decent figures - even on short runs)

 

[newbiecrg]

if you want to be economical the 140 is the one to go or even the 1.9TDI

There isn't fast, economical diesels... It's like justifying the buy the buy of a BMW 335d due to fuel consumption... Rubbish, sure it burns less than the petrol equivalent but is far from economical...

That's why, from a certain performance level, I do not consider diesel, I find that whoever spends over £50K in a car cannot have the issue of fuel consumption in mind, unless "lives" in the road...

Anyway, sorry the slight off topic... having said that I think the 170ps should be economical....

Pedro

 

[Vertigo1]

Regardless of whether "performance" diesels can be expected to be as economical as their lesser performing brethren isn't relevant here. The fact is that the published figures from Audi put the 170 at around 3mpg worse than the 140, on average, when in reality it appears it's nowhere near this efficient.

I've dropped an email to Audi CS to ask them to explain themselves as, although I love the car and engine, the lack of economy in general has annoyed me greatly, especially as it doesn't appear to have improved after 3000 miles.

What I might do is ring round and see if any local dealers have a higher mileage 170 car I can test drive to see if it's any different.

 

[rich1068]

If you take it easy it's amazingly economical:

Christ! Are you towing a tanker?

 

[Staz]

Nope, I was just cruising on the a14 instead of racing like normal lol

Filled up when I got to Harwich. Dropped to 290 when I floored it through Holland though!

 

[dubbers]

Great thread...

Had a remapped PD130 MkIV Golf prior to this 170 DSG and that did 50mpg all day long (90% motorway mileage/speeds)

My 170DSG has 3k miles on it now and its averaging low-mid 40's. My feeling is that the true economy is about 42-43mpg based on M40 driving at 80-80mph.

It does seem any playfulness with the loud pedal results in poor overall economy. If I drive 60mph, being gradual with acceleration, then I can get low 50mpg (on a 40mile B road commute).

The car is always filled with BP Ultimate. I can only hope that when 170DSG remap comes to market - The economy will improve. I've got this car for 3 yrs/90k miles should be interesting.

 

[steve184]

vertigo i'd be interested to see what they say.... there is no point at all in me going to audi yet as sure as eggs is eggs they will just tell me the engine is new and tight blah blah blah and full ecopnomy won't appear for another x thousand miles... after all i've not even been able to use a full tnk up yet from full to empty to do my own calculations - although its looking like with my kind of driving a range of 360 is looking favourable - 80 less than my old 140. But who knows, perhaps the DIS is lying and telling me im doing less than i am, but i doubt it!

 

[RobinA3]

This is from a typical drive to work, filled the car up before i went to work so as you can see on the trip it was 16mile journey

I gotta admit i didn't go full throttle or over 3000rpm so no full boost loads.

Just shows you that a petrol can give good economy when required and plus the added bonus of 7100rpm - something that can't be said for the tractors...........lol

 

[Staz]

I've been holding back to petrol is better than diesel comments since this thread began lol But it's pretty obvious which is better

 

[rickquattro]

But if you had a re-mapped PD 130 instead...

To be fair, it didnt stay like this for long on the autobahn.

 

[Staz]

You win!

 

[normski]

Without wishing to put the thread off track(tor), anyone got figures for an S3?

 

[markwiggy]

Without wishing to put the thread off track(tor), anyone got figures for an S3?

On average since new mine has returned 26mpg, at best on a run I got 31 -32mpg at 70-75mph, at 80-85mph 28-29mpg and at worst after a good cross country thrash 17-18 mpg. All figures are DIS readings, car has now covered 2k so hopefully MPG will improve a little.

Mark

 

[C_Audiboy]

This is from a typical drive to work, filled the car up before i went to work so as you can see on the trip it was 16mile journey

I gotta admit i didn't go full throttle or over 3000rpm so no full boost loads.

Just shows you that a petrol can give good economy when required and plus the added bonus of 7100rpm - something that can't be said for the tractors...........lol

F F Sake thats pretty good MPG. I get nowhere near that and I dont drive it hard either.

Around town between 24 and 26 mpg
Motorway around 31 MPG (never over 80MPH)

Around town I'll get around 275 miles to a tank
Motorway driving I'll get around 340 to a tank

The DIS range figure of '480' miles when you fill up is a joke....

 

[rowansbank]

My last vehicle was a new D40 Navara which weighed nearly twice that of my A3, had a 2.5 TDi engine with approx 170ps on tap. I never got less than 30mpg from it and on motorway runs (70-80mph) got high 30's from it.

Wow! I drive the previous model (133ps) and never get better than 30mpg and average 26-28! Perhaps I should look to update? Will wait & see how hard dear old Golden Brown hammers us in the budget, I guess.

On topic, just to say how envious all us 3.2 quattro owners must be of the diesel mileage - even my other half driving gently can't better 30mpg and I ususally return <25!

 

[coupe-se]

Wow! I drive the previous model (133ps) and never get better than 30mpg and average 26-28! Perhaps I should look to update? Will wait & see how hard dear old Golden Brown hammers us in the budget, I guess.

It really is a superb engine/gearbox and a huge leap over the previous type Must say that i really do miss my D40 Navara ALOT. The A3 is quicker and the Audi dealers excellent, but the Navara was so nice to drive and own and at 20k miles the tyres still looked new (unlike the ones on my A3 whiich are just about shot at 10k), and it never used a drop of oil. I was expecting massive diesel savings with the A3; as I mentioned above; but they haven't been as big as expected. On one motorway trip with a moderate load in my Navara I sat at 60mph for about an hour while a mate caught up, got 40mpg as a result.

 

[Vertigo1]

vertigo i'd be interested to see what they say

Well I've just had a call from Audi CS to say they're looking into this and will get back to me in a few days with more information.

In my email to them I basically queried how the economy figures were derived and explained that, in my experience, the car was producing nowhere near the claimed peformance, especially compared to my previous 140. Whilst not being aggressive, I did make a point of commenting that the economy was one of the prime factors in my decision to get this engine over a petrol and that I was rather aggrieved at the real-world economy I was getting.

Nice of them to actually call me but we'll wait and see what information they actually come back with. I'm not expecting much more than a standard explanation of how the figures are produced and that, should I have any further concerns, to book the car into a dealer for investigation. Any more than that and I'll be impressed tbqh.

 

[marklad2020]

This might be a stupid comment - but I have found that just a couple of hills and gradients can have a huge impact on fuel economy. Living in a flat or a hilly region might explain some of the differences between fuel figures that people are reporting?

(140TDI 50+ on a trip)

 

[vagman]

I've just completed 5 months and 6,000 in my 170 DSG SB and am averaging 43.8mpg according to DIS.

However, the actual mpg is 41mpg.

I do about 45 miles per day on mostly country roads and have a tendency to, er, floor it.

 

[steve184]

well i had a nice little blast on the way home from work today, give it a good bit of stick - and got home and wow i averaged 24mpg! hmmmmm, are they sure this is diesel???????