Awful economy on new engine

I have an online consumption calculator which for that mileage and those litres shows 44.85 mpg. Coincidentally, that mpg figure is in line with the results posted by other owners. So in the real world, the 1.4 COD engine is going to return 39-45 mpg over varying driving conditions.
 
Mmm, I used a online calculator too but it seems the conversion to gallons was incorrect, considering how I was driving the car without economy in mind, and no S3's overtook me :D, even 44.85mpg isn't bad at all.
 
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Did you use US or Imperial gallons? There's a difference and most converters have the option of both.
 
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Just thought i'd let you guys know, my 1.4 COD has now got 80 miles on the clock and i've done 37mpg best on a country road. I'm sure it'll get better over time but we'll see.
 
Just done a 400 mile round trip doing mostly 70ish on a mixture of motorway and A-roads. Very light traffic which helped, but did have the car fully loaded for moving my brother into his new house.

My 1.4 122 achieved 48mpg for the trip! I set the Climate to Eco mode but other than I didn't adjust my driving style and just left Drive Select in Auto mode. Really pleased with that. I guess the COD would return similar mpg on the same trip :)
 
mjcourtney said:
Just done a 400 mile round trip doing mostly 70ish on a mixture of motorway and A-roads. Very light traffic which helped, but did have the car fully loaded for moving my brother into his new house.

My 1.4 122 achieved 48mpg for the trip! I set the Climate to Eco mode but other than I didn't adjust my driving style and just left Drive Select in Auto mode. Really pleased with that. I guess the COD would return similar mpg on the same trip :)
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Thats decent for mainly doing 70
 
wideboybloke said:
Did you use US or Imperial gallons? There's a difference and most converters have the option of both.
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No I used litres to uk gallons but I think I misread the result as it showed 35.22L = 7UK gal 5.9785p and I misread it. My fault really but I am not disappointed in the result as it is the same mpg as the 2.0l diesel I previously owned over the same journey driven hard in the same way. My car's average reading on the DIS was showing 44.4 by the way.
 
Just done a 250 mile round trip, with mainly motorway driving and a bit of the A414 - managed to achieve 42mpg driving at 70 so wasn't bad, I did floor it in second once and had a few brisk accelerations here and there, but took it easy as it's only got 300 miles on the clock. One thing I'm impressed with it just glides up to speed, with only twitching your foot by a few millimetres.

Actually, the cabin is very quiet on the motorway, I turned the radio off and just sat in silence for a while as it was just - well, peaceful lol. Car is the quietest i've ever driven.

Two things i'm not so hot on at the moment is, it does seem to jolt the odd time when coming off the accelerator, also when changing gears sometime. The other thing is the gearbox does crunch a little, and sounds very dry when changing from third to fourth like it's metal on metal, but i'm putting it down to a new car, it'll loosen up in the end. Plus as I hate to say it, nothings perfect. Even a Rolls - Royce.


Oh, just a quick note, i've noticed sometime whilst engine breaking and using the foot break at the same time (habit, the vans breaks are rubbish and engine breaking helps when going round slow sharp turns) it has a slight judder? Not sure if thats normal... probably something i'd just put down to the way something is. The car is so smooth you notice the small bits.
 
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I find this astonishing. My 1.8 Saloon easily gets 45mpg+ (on the DIS) doing my 30 mile commute (pretty much the length of the A22) so I do all from 60(ish) to stop and start through the towns.
 
The last check I did on my fuel consumption was when I was on holiday in Germany in October 2014. I did a mixture of gentle country roads and 120-130mph autobahn driving and I got around 53mpg overall from my 184 quattro diesel so I'm more than happy. Also out of the 12k miles I've done so far just over 3k of those were in France and Germany where diesel is a lot cheaper than unleaded. It was equivalent to £1.00 per litre back in October.
 
coddy85 said:
I find this astonishing. My 1.8 Saloon easily gets 45mpg+ (on the DIS) doing my 30 mile commute (pretty much the length of the A22) so I do all from 60(ish) to stop and start through the towns.
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As I stated before, on the A21, thus a similar journey, I get an indicated average on the DIS of 65mpg...
 
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And of course going back up as many again. The figure was obtained from Hastings until I went onto the M25 whereupon it dropped to about 55mpg because I was travelling at about 80mph. My most recent trip, where the average was 45mpg, my speeds were up to between 80-90mph because I was testing the car after some recent warranty work that had been carried out.
 
Well I've still only done 600-ish miles. My first full tank gave me all of 28mpg! :(

Now granted the vast majority of my journeys were short local trips of a few miles at a time as I'm only 3-4 miles from work and shops etc so I know I shouldn't expect very good economy for such trips but hopefully it'll get a bit better over the next few tanks as the engine runs in a little.
 
Must be either ultra cold conditions, your particular driving style, something wrong somewhere or you are reading the instant mpg instead of average..
 
That's actual MPG calculated from refilling the tank, not what the DIS reports. Probably a combination of new engine, cold conditions, short journey and lots of stopping/starting.
 
Under similar circumstances the 1.6 diesel loaner I had recently gave about the same...
 
Yeah with that kind of driving I only got around 33 out of my old 150PS TDI tbh

Just been out this morning to run some errands and the DIS was showing an average of 29mpg which, considering I was never travelling more than half a mile before having to come to a stop at lights or a junction and spent the last mile on the way home in stop/start traffic, isn't actually too bad. Hopefully it's loosening up a bit already :)
 
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I'd be disappointed this those figures tbh. I'd be looking at an A3 COD as my next car. I currently have an A1 1.4 122 and my average is 46mpg (brim calculated since purchase) so would expect an improvement, maybe even touching the 50's.

Guess it's down to having a good commuting route though so we'll have to wait and see!
 
ToniqR said:
I'd be disappointed this those figures tbh. I'd be looking at an A3 COD as my next car. I currently have an A1 1.4 122 and my average is 46mpg (brim calculated since purchase) so would expect an improvement, maybe even touching the 50's.

Guess it's down to having a good commuting route though so we'll have to wait and see!
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I'm not sure the COD will offer much improvement unless its doing longer runs my 1.4 122 A1 has managed an average of 39.3 it drinks fuel
 
Petrol is never going to compete with diesel for economy but it'll be closer on short urban trips than on longer ones.

I'm still quids in either way as the fuel itself is cheaper and I'm paying about £40 a month less in tax than I would be for the equivalent diesel. I'd need to be averaging less than 25mpg to be worse off overall :)
 
Vertigo1 said:
Petrol is never going to compete with diesel for economy but it'll be closer on short urban trips than on longer ones.

I'm still quids in either way as the fuel itself is cheaper and I'm paying about £40 a month less in tax than I would be for the equivalent diesel. I'd need to be averaging less than 25mpg to be worse off overall :)
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I don't know, with my commute my average mpg seems to fixed at 42, and now that the colder weather having such an effect upon fuel consumption I think that's pretty good. It's all academic anyway because we drive our cars differently and have different driving conditions. It needs to be like for like and I would expect to be able to obtain diesel mpg figures from your car's as I can from mine.
 
Had a run up the M42 and M6 this evening (oh joy), averaging a 60mph cruise and was getting over 55mpg which is much more reasonable :)
 
Vertigo1 said:
Well I've still only done 600-ish miles. My first full tank gave me all of 28mpg! :(

Now granted the vast majority of my journeys were short local trips of a few miles at a time as I'm only 3-4 miles from work and shops etc so I know I shouldn't expect very good economy for such trips but hopefully it'll get a bit better over the next few tanks as the engine runs in a little.
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I have the Golf GT 1.4 ACT, which has the same engine, and I also live about 4 miles from my nearest town. That short journey usually averages 40-42 mpg starting from cold. (Car has now done 1200 miles). On longer runs (mixture of A and B roads, and dual carriageways), I always get between 47 and 52 mpg.
 
Your short runs are the same as mine, my car, in it's first year up on the 25th Jan, has completed 5025 miles...
 
I work three miles from home and it's all urban with loads of lights and junctions, hence why my economy on such runs is awful I guess.
 
Haven't done a brim to brim yet. But with 100 miles on the clock I'm getting a DIS reported MPG of 42-44mpg for my commute (A3 SB 1.4tfsi CoD), which compares to 55mpg for my old car (A3 SB 8v 2.0tdi with 100k miles on the clock).
 
If it helps some folks feel better about their fuel economy, I'm currently getting 25mpg average on my 1.8 TFSI quattro (mainly town driving in London) and 33mpg on motorway runs.

Hoping will get better with time (car has done 600 miles thus far). At least the lower fuel prices help offset the high consumption.
 
If it makes you feel better my average mpg over this week has been 18.1 and I haven't been over 3k revs or 40 mph. Manchester traffic :mad:
 
Well with 740ish on the clock, this morning I tried a run down the motorway at a constant 70mph and got about 52mpg which is pretty damn decent for a petrol if you ask me! My 2.0TDI would do about 10mpg more than that.

On the way back I tried 80mph but couldn't maintain it for any decent period due to traffic but it looked like it was getting around the 40mpg mark. I realise economy drops off significantly at higher speeds (drag increasing as the square of speed etc) but if that's representative then it's a significant drop. Looks like I'll be sticking a bit more closely to the speed limit :)
 
Vertigo1 said:
Well with 740ish on the clock, this morning I tried a run down the motorway at a constant 70mph and got about 52mpg which is pretty damn decent for a petrol if you ask me! My 2.0TDI would do about 10mpg more than that.

On the way back I tried 80mph but couldn't maintain it for any decent period due to traffic but it looked like it was getting around the 40mpg mark. I realise economy drops off significantly at higher speeds (drag increasing as the square of speed etc) but if that's representative then it's a significant drop. Looks like I'll be sticking a bit more closely to the speed limit :)
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Are you judging the fuel consumption figure from the instant read-out or what and over what distance? Of course I'm not doubting your figures but I think we can only really validate our fuel consumption figures on a brim to brim basis. Else (like a lot of people) I've seen over 100mpg!
 
Yeah the 70mph run was just using the DIS average. I am also tracking my actual consumption each time I fill up so I have an accurate overall average for each tank. The only way I'll get an accurate figure for motorway runs is to fill up then immediately get on the motorway, then fill up again when I come off and track actual consumption. I'll try this when I have a chance.
 
I did approximately 280 miles this week from a full tank, I filled up 37 litres today (the DIS was showing 90 miles remaining). So that's about 34MPG, which I don't think is too bad considering the way I drive and the routes I've taken, which includes city driving and a lot of stop-start traffic. My previous car, a naturally aspirated 1.4 petrol, would achieve around 22-25MPG for the same route.

I drive mostly in dynamic mode, but switching occasionally to S mode to overtake or for some spirited driving. I do plan ahead whilst driving, so I know if I took my foot of the accelerator I could achieve some better results. I don't speed, but I do like to accelerate away quickly.

I'm planning to drive up north to my parents in a couple of weeks which is a 250 mile trip up on the A1. I'm going to try to drive sensibly and in eco mode and see what results I can achieve. I'm hoping I can do the round trip without filling up until I get home :D It's going to be a challenge!
 
Interesting that you mention the Drive Select mode. I've got mine in individual with the engine on Comfort and the steering on Dynamic. I prefer the heavier steering feel but find the engine is a bit smoother around town in Comfort mode - don't know if or how it affects economy though.
 
I've not tried comfort mode yet ;) I do like the heavier steering too with Dynamic mode. I've tried auto mode for the gearbox, but it was very hesitant changing gears.

I would expect Dynamic and S mode to negatively affect economy due to them holding onto the gears longer (S-tronic). In S mode, driving around town it rarely gets out of 2nd or 3rd gear.
 
Any updates on your economy ? has it settled at a more acceptable figure ?
 
a3_phil said:
I've found (again, fairly unscientifically) that my fuel efficiency is absolutely hammered by the cold weather.

Identical commutes this week with similar wind direction:
12C - 62mpg
3C - 54mpg
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Is yours front wheel drive? Mine is doing the same in similar conditions.
Have you thought about getting a DTUK box? Tempted for bit more power but what will it do to the fuel consumption?
 
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