Audi are not particularly known for their wonderous mpg figures.....

, as for manufacturers figures large shovels of salt required with nearly all.

But they are not the manufacturers figures. They are the official figures that all manufacturers are required to quote by law.

The figures are obtained on a rolling road in a lab not in the real world.

One thing that no one seems to consider is the effect of Stop Start that is fitted to many new cars. In the real world it has little if any effect, in truth if you spend all your life on the motorway it has no effect whatsover. But it has a large effect on the test results obtained in a lab because of the way the tets are carried out, that's why all makes fit it to their "economy" models.

I have a BMW 1 series, has stop start, official average of 62.8 mpg, have managed 48 mpg over the last 5 or more years. If it had been 6 months older it would not have had stop start and the official average would have been 50.5 mpg. Only differences are mine has stop start and another 20 bhp. Owners of the earlier cars get virtually the same mpg as I get.

At work we have 2 Volvo V40's, one came with stop start, one without. The one fitted with stop start has an official figure about 10 mpg better than the one without it but being used in virtually the same conditions they get exactly the same mpg.

Bet you new Audi has stop start fitted.

As others have said a re-map will be the end of your warranty if discovered and they usually leave some error code regardless of what the company says.

A re-map will also put up your insurance, usually about £70 from what I have read on other forums. Some don't bother telling their insurers but if its dicovered after an accident you will be left with a very big bill.

Remaps rarely improve economy. They can improve power but unless you get a dyno run done before and after on an independant set of rollers you will never know the truth, don't believe what the sellers tell you. Read their small print, they never garantee anything.

So if you are currently getting 40mpg and the re-map miraculously gave you a 10% improvement over 10,000 miles you would save about £136 a year. Take off the additional insurance premium and that falls to £100 or less. The re-map is not going to cost the £250 shown on the website, that only applies if your car is older than 2009 and you can visit Banbury. Lets assume its going to cost you £400. You will get your money back in 4 years possibly if by some mirracle it does improve your economy.

One thing re-maps are very good at is deceiving the dash display into showing rediculous figures, the only way to check is over several tank to tank fill ups before and after dividing the miles by the fuel used.

How anyone can actually belive that a company with a laptop and a fancy ebsite can actually better what the manufacturer spend millions developing is beyond me. If the chap with the laptop was that good he would not be working in a shed, he would be Head of R & D at VAG.

As they say, a fool and his money etc.

Edited by skidpan on 17/03/2013 at 14:00

Hi

I'm having similar concerns as well. I have a 1.6SE (59 plate). The mileage meter says I'm getting 36.7 mpg, which is quite low. However, in real time I am only getting between 21 to 28mpg, which is even more shocking!!

I am an extremely careful driver, I make sure I drive in neutral on a slope and near the road end. I managed to get official mpg +10mpg on my previous car (Honda)

I'm so disappointed with the A3 running costs, I'm thinking of selling it. I've only had it for 3 months.

Not sure if anyone else out there is having the same problem? Has anyone had such a low mpg ever?

The last bit is suppose to be a table, but is clearly not working. Can you put a table in or do I have to do it another way? Does anyone know? Sorry.

Hi

Here is my attempt at a table as per the above post where my first attempt at pasting a table failed. As per my previous post above these are the actual mpg as logged by the readers on this website.

· Manufacturer / Overall % achieved of claimed / E.g. Model comparison / Actual mpg as per HJ

· BMW / 83% / 320d / 48mpg

· Audi / 82% / A4 177ps / 48mpg

· Mercedes / 85% / C200 CDi / 48.5

· Skoda / 93% / Superb Estate 1.6 Tdi / 59.1 (109%)

· Hyundai / 83% / i40 Estate 1.7crdi / 51 (89%)

· Toyota / 89% / Avensis 2 D-4d / 51mpg

· Toyota / Prius + / 50 (76%)

· VW / 91% / Touran 2 Tdi / 46 (85%)

· VW / 91% / Passat 2 TDi CR / 51 (102%)

· Honda / 91% / Accord 2.2 cdti / 48mpg

· Ford / 85% / Mondeo 2 D / 45mpg

· Ford / 85% / Focus 1.6 TDCi eco / 56.8 mpg

· Citroen / 88% / C4 1.6 HDi / 55.9 mpg

· VW / 91% / Golf 1.6 TDI Blue M / 59 mpg

Edited by 5cylinderdiesel on 05/06/2013 at 15:10

We have a 2010 Kia Ceed SW 1.6 CRDi. It has the 115 PS engine and in 3 years of owning it I have never found it to be lacking in power or torque. Compared to the Focus 1.6 TDCi 110 PS it replaced it is positively quick. 51 mpg overall (genuine calculated figure over 28,000 miles) is excellent for a car of its size that gets driven normally with no reagrd for getting the last mpg from it.

We have tried a 1.6 105 PS Skoda diesel in the past, it was very poor, no go at all.

So don't say all 1.6 diesles are inadequate, drive a few, you will find some are acceptable or better than accetable.

I think it depends what you want from a car. if mpg /low emissions is priority, the salesman was probably right, particularly in an urban environment with lots of town driving and traffic - there the Prius would have the advantage. But to try and compare it to a powerful 2 litre diesel with it's effortless wave of torque is like comparing apples with oranges. Also the perception of the CVT transmission like a constantly slipping clutch is alien to most of us driving a manual or torque auto. A neighbour has a hybrid Auris and achieving 70 mpg running around but as he says takes a bit of getting used to. I may try running an old Prius ( they're very cheap now) as an experiment at some point.

I have a theory.

New engines nowadays are built very tight, in the assumption that they loosen (wear) over time. VAG in particular are obliged to support their extended service regime and extra effort is made to make sure oil consumption is minimal as users nowadays do not carry out regular maintenance checks (oil level etc). Of course certain engines drink oil but thats another story (of woe)
VAG now factory fill their new engines with longlife synthetic oil to VW504.00/507.00 specification. This oil is widely acknowledged to be among the best and longest lasting and is deemed suitable for use up to 2 years/18,000 miles (30,000 miles in some engines). Lubrication quality is very high, however this makes the process of running in (aka breaking in, bedding in) likely to be far less effective and slower. The problem is probably made worse by peoples general perception and habit of "taking it easy" in the early days, and many drivers (particularly low mileage drivers) changing their oil much more frequently than the oil life would allow.

The oil is never sufficiently contaminated to perform the light wearing action that is necessary to bed the engine in. In other words, some engines are never run in and continue to run with tight tolerances which increases frictional losses and reduces efficiency.

I personally would never perform an early oil change on a new engine for this reason.

Just a theory mind you.

I think we can forget the OP. Anyone who buys a new Audi and then thinks giving a bloke in a shed £300 to re-map it is a good idea clearly has no grasp of reality.

Bloke in shed with laptop v's VAG. Lets think, who has the biggest R & D budget.

Am I alone in thinking that a lightly stressed powerful engine gives better real world economy than a 'barely enough power' economy special

Wishful thinking!

If this were true, we'd all be driving 5.0l V8s wouldn't we? Lorries wouldn't be hamstrung with 10hp/tonne or less...

Sadly, there is no physical basis for the 'lightly stressed engine gives better economy' theory-the converse is true, generally the more you load an engine, the better the efficiency.

Bigger cylinders do enjoy an economy of scale over smaller ones-but you'll have to drop the RPM to realise the benefit, so the in-gear acceleration may be no better.

The 330D only has the same unitary capacity as the 320D-500cc. It's a great engine but 'averaging' mid forties must have involved conservative driving at modest speeds in which case the 320D is still comfortably ahead in terms of sheer economy.

Driving a 1.6 TDI DSG Octavia.

A/C running all the time.

short runs, and I mean a multitude of single figure mile duration runs, get over 45mpg going on for 50 but not above.

a reasonable 25 mile plus run = 50+mpg

A long liesurely run "with the traffic flow" i.e. only overtaking tractors of slow runners.

BUt doing an indicated 80 odd on Motorways.(say 75 actual)

a readout of 60/61.? less about 3% (for calculated figs)

I can live with that.

But I try and drive smooth.

Spill my drink otherwise dont I!

I had an F10 520d and an E91 320d before that. Both got hammered up the motorway and both averaged 46mpg