Fuel Consumption
 

Hi
My fuel consumption is not what it should be so, while searching fuel consumption ratings on my car, I found this site. It confirmed that my fuel consumption is way below average.

I drive a 2011 BMW 323i automatic and have my car fully maintained, including great tires and engine oil. Soon I will be installing new spark plugs to see if that helps. I recently had my car tested at a reputable shop that specializes in BMW’s and they confirmed that it was perfectly serviced, including all new fully synthetic fluids.

I’m hoping that this forum will help direct me to the problem so that I can start getting the typical fuel economy my car should get.

Herb2

How you drive the car has the biggest effect on fuel consumption. You say elsewhere you leave the engine ticking over to warm up. That wastes a lot of fuel. How reliant you are on the brakes is another reason for high consumption. Every time you have to brake you are wasting the energy you used to get to that speed. Backing off in advance can same a huge amount of petrol. Low tyre pressures can cause poor mpg but so do cold roads. I get 10% less mpg in the winter than I do in the summer and we don't have winters anything like you do in Canada. I have a ScanGauge E fitted to my OBD 2 port and it shows instantaneous and average mpg and it is a real eye-opener.

Can you share some good spark plugs for BMW cars? There are 2 types of spark plugs, normal and platinum, which one should I choose?

VW - Mine is a 1.4L turbo - uses double platinum - probably because they last a LONG time.....

....so much so that VW has almost doubled the change interval since 2017................

Best of luck,



ez

Jocko covered a lot really well. Do you have passengers often? Do you have tools or other things in the trunk/boot? Every extra pound is another drop of fuel, nothing in itself but added together then something. Let us know what things you figure out. Curious minds are now piqued.

I will be using my car tomorrow so today I took a number of bags of compost out of the boot. They have been there for several weeks (since I picked them up) but as I have not been out it didn't matter. Tomorrow it will.