My lifetime avg after 47k miles is 26.8mpg. What is yours? Curious how the turbo compares with my lead foot to your NA model and gentle foot.
BMW X1 insane fuel economy
- Thread starter Jack Watts
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Very nice! That's beating the EPA combined rating by a very healthy margin.
I know this is getting off the thread topic but I use the real time fuel economy gauge in the info screen. I’m not sure if the later models have that. When I am at cruising speed I can see the engine go into Miller mode as the needle jumps from the low 30’s to right at 40mpg.
My latest trip results were also impressive in that I didn’t use cruise control. The passes here are winding plus we had a few construction stops to boot.
I wonder if BMW implements any of this in their engines?
Wild. I have literally NEVER seen any sort of "miller mode", and my 2015 sure didn't have that. One time I was a total jackwagon and drove 60mph on the freeway TRYING to hit that 30mpg EPA hwy rating. I managed 31.X coasting up and down hills, making people made as all getout. After that I just decided I hated the car and would get something with enough power to keep pace with traffic while also meeting/exceeding EPA estimates. Literally no other car I had was unable to. Even my little 155bhp SR20DE powered infiniti.
Best I ever got in my 14 X1 s28i 2.0L turbo was 34 mpg on a full tank, going from Denver up 12k ft to Aspen, and back down to just north of Los Alamos. Had to slow down to 55 mph at Northern NM where 4 cops were hungry to catch weed smugglers. My scangauge said I got 42 mpg for one hour once driving approx 70 mph with a 20 mph wind to the back. Mostly driving speed limit of 75 with wind and AC I get approx 25 mph. I'm paying $1.98/gal for 91 oct now and barely driving with 33k on odo in 7 years. I never get tired of driving it. Best driving car I ever had.
My wife's 2015 X1 is a nice drive as well. I really like the M Sport package on the E84 X1 because it gets you the sport seats and M Sport suspension. It performs more like an E90 wagon than a CUV.
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It has variable valve timing and valve lift, and I think it does actually use Miller Cycle during part of its operation. If you look at real-time fuel economy, it does jump quite a bit based on pretty small throttle inputs. There's some interesting info on the B46 version of it here: https://www.bimmerpost.com/goodiesforyou/B46-Engine.pdf
To WS6's point about his NA Mazda, I will say that in general terms, forced inductions offers, by far, the most variability in fuel economy depending on the right foot. Fuel economy on my 2.5 VW wagon never really changed much depending on how I drove it--so that experience sounds familiar. On my R, I've gotten 18mpg out of a tank and I've gotten 34....
My experience is opposite. No matter what I do, I get great epa rating crushing mileage in my turbo cx5. My NA cx5? Sometimes it would underperform by 6+mpg on the highway. Windy day doing 85? Welcome to 22mpg my friend! My turbo cx5? It may be 26.2-8 in those conditions, just 0.8 or so off its 27epa. Sedately driving at 65-70? Getting 28-30 all day long. The non turbo model was just too weak to be a highway car with its weight and drag. It did well around town so long as there wasnt much stop and go, but on the highway it would struggle badly and it showed in the mpg. It just wasnt meant for it. You could tell also because it had no sound insulation. Very loud. Mazda has come a loonnnngggg way since then.
Valvetronic is a wonderful thing.
We just got back from a week at Seabrook Island, SC. I drove the X1 because we needed a little more room; we were picking our son up en route. Before I left the Louisville area I reset the trip computer so that it kept track of the average mileage and average speed for the entire seven days. In my experience the mpg calculations of newer BMWs tend to be pessimistic by an average of @2-3%, so the actual mpg may be a slight bit higher.
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