VW Polo Bluemotion low mpg

mattyprice4004

This is why I hate the daft MPG figures. We have a Bluemotion in the family, and it only gets an average of 5mpg more over my Rover 75.

We drive on similar roads, and if anything I have a heavier right foot. 5mpg doesn't seem worth being stuck in a Polo for!

attila_

It's winter! Expect to see a drop in mpg as your efficiency goes down. I have a VAG pd engine and am getting 6-7mpg less (around 11%).

Check your tyres also

Loganfire

Well taking it on it's first long motorway run tonight so ill see how I get on thanks for all your comments and advise

decsdad

Hi,
40% less than the claimed figure.

My thoughts,

10% winter deisel
10% new car, needs loosened
10% your driving style
then you'll be 10% below claimed figure which is where you'll stay.

I have had the skoda version, fabia 1.2tdi greenline 2, and I am now on the VW 1.6tdi bluemotion, my wife has an A3 tdie, these engines take time to get used to, you will need to adapt your driving a bit, just simple things like, take your foot off the gas when you see a queue/roundabout/traffic lights ahead, so you just cruise up without using the gas or brakes, just go down the gears. Obviosly no hammering it, and stay about 60 on the motorway etc.
I did 12000 miles in the 1.2tdi skoda(same engine) and it did improve by about 10% over 8k miles. If I really tried could get the extra 10% myself, and summer was 10% better than winter.
I did get used to the road to work and back and each day tried to get it better. Did get 90mpg(on mfd) occaisionally, also got 50mpg sometimes if I was in a hurry.

So dont worry and stick with it.

FYI
I got rid of my fabia 1.2tdi as it was too small as a family car(bought it as i was blinded by the mpg)
And got a VW Caddy Maxi Life, 1.6tdi bluemotion (53mpg) hoping to get it up to 60 once there are few more miles on it.
The VW is cheaper to insure, which offsets the road tax £115.
It is about 20k service interval compared to skodas 10k which goes towards offsetting the fuel cost, also wont need to hire a van and can carry 7 people so costs may just about balance.(rose tinted spectacles) but it was a quality of life decision.

Hope that helps

almillar

anotherbaldrick - fair comment, a warmed up, worn in engined Bluemotion did it, and all cars aren't exactly the same, but I'm really not sure about the manufacturers being allowed to tune for the test. Sure, especially for this car, they could have chosen gear ratios for the best economy at the most common speeds on the known test, but then those ratios apply to all cars with that gearbox (for example). If you're suggesting they're allowed to tweak the ECU for example, I really think that's not allowed.

vax2002

the main tuning they do for the test is:
Remove all items from the car not required, radio, spare wheel, mats, carpets, just about everything thats not bolted down, get a 6 stone test driver...
Then they streamline the car with a roll of gaffa tape and block any gaps around doors, grills, and then use a test track with low friction and high tyre pressures.

Weird_Nev

vax2002 wrote: »

the main tuning they do for the test is:
Remove all items from the car not required, radio, spare wheel, mats, carpets, just about everything thats not bolted down, get a 6 stone test driver...
Then they streamline the car with a roll of gaffa tape and block any gaps around doors, grills, and then use a test track with low friction and high tyre pressures.

This propmted me to do a bit of reading - because I know for fact they DON't tape up gaps. There's no point - the car isn't even moving against air resistance in the test!

How economy figures are calculated.

IN short - the Fuel consumption is never actually measured, incredibly. It's all done on the CO2 output, and then back calculated to economy on the basis of how much CO2 is produced. Incredible stuff.

There is evidence that cars like the bluemotions are compromised in "drivablilty" for the sake of the tests. THey tend, for example, to have a very long top gear to allow the car to roll at very low RPM. The wheels are set without toe in, which reduced rolling resistance at the expense of handling stability. And, most worrying is that VW in particular have ECU maps with "lean" spots in certian points in the rev range - designed to co-incide with the EU cruising speeds. THis means that through the steady-state portions of the test the engines are running in an ultra-efficient low fuel mode, but you can (apparently) actually feel these lean spots out on the road, and people report much improved driveability after having a smoother map programmed into the ECU.

I've never really understood why they've bothered - Our 1.4 Skoda Fabia Tdi got over 60 real Mpg everywhere. It was nice to drive, handled acceptably well, and was just ridiculously economical. I drove a 1.2 Bluemotion Polo as a hire car on a 2 week holiday. The handling was compromised by skinny tyres and (i'm guessing) the suspension geometry. It also felt gutless - prompting me to thrash it to within an inch of it's life. The result? About 55mpg.....

jaydeeuk1

caeler wrote: »

Hi I'm in the same boat. I've just taken delivery of Audi's version of the bluemotion, it is 99 co2 with an expected combined mpg of 74mpg so I'm expecting great things. However to get those great things you need to drive so very differently! I'm told that the cold weather will impact my mpg plus until the engine losens up after a few thousand miles. My first tank got me 65mpg (I manually worked this out as well as using the computer to monitor usage). You need to feather the throttle, coast down hills, no speeding up quickly, drive slowly to achieve anything impressive. The highest I've got my car to is 73mpg but average on a journey is between 60-65mpg. I'm monitoring it all closely! My old car used to manage 45-50mpg so this is still really good!

You do realise that 'coasting' or driving in neutral, uses more fuel than going downhill in 5th or 6th? (not to mention you have less control) In fact, in most cars nowadays with the fancy computers, they wont use any fuel if revs are above idle. My parents thought their trip computer has broken when it kept reading 999mpg when not accelerating.

Hammyman

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

You do realise that 'coasting' or driving in neutral, uses more fuel than going downhill in 5th or 6th?

I must be getting slow as I missed that. Yes, that is completely correct.

When you coast down hill in neutral or with your foot on the clutch, the engine uses fuel to keep it idling. When you go down in gear with your foot off the accelerator, the engine management cuts all fuel to the engine. Therefore coasting down in neutral uses more fuel than driving down in gear not using the throttle.

vax2002

So if you sit in a tin box death trap, you save around 50p a day...