Whatever the actual mileage is, it is better than the 4.8 and it is about as quick to 50 mph, which is where I do most of my driving.

You can log your fuel purchases and mileage at www.gasbuddy.com and it does the calculations for you. You can also keep track of gas prices in your area.

I've been using it for a few years now and I keep track of all my vehicles here.

My 2008 X5 3.0 averages between 16 and 18 mpg per tank.

You know how you're already aware of how mileage works, but try to play the fuel system anyway? Finally have enough break-in mileage to open it up a little on the autobahn. I kept watching the MPG meter, trying to keep it in the 20s zone. On a 150 mile/240 km trip, I averaged 23.7 MPG, at an average speed of 125 km/h - with a few bursts to 160 km/h. This compares to 25 MPG a tankful in my normal 20 km daily commute. Still, that's pretty good if you're in a hurry.

(I know, dumb to mix units. I travel and caluclate in km, but the efficiency gauge is calibrated in MPG. Somehow I understand easier when I want a higher number, rather than lower as in L /100 km.)

best way i found is get a receipt everytime and write down the odometer reading on the back of the receipt... that way you'll know exactly how many gallons and how many miles between fill ups...

-john

Here's an updated mileage graph for our 35d. The black diamonds are MPG (US gal) calculated from the miles and gals since the previous tankful. Note the low MPG tanks (except the first two) are when we were towing a trailer.

The lifetime mpg on our 35d is still not above 22 mpg. I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm pretty happy given the towing etc.. We still see 50-100mi runs between 27-30mpg. But these are not a very good indication of real world overall mileage unless you do a lot of long distance highway driving.

On a side note: The last tankful included a 100mi round trip run into the city. When we got there, the OBC was reading nearly 30mpg. And it was still reading 26.2 mpg when we started home after a bunch of stops for shopping etc. Still not too bad. But we got caught in stop and go traffic. We were literally crawling for well over 30 min.. I expected the mpg to drop like a stone. But it didn't drop a single .1 mpg :) In fact, it was still reading 26.2mpg when we got home 40 miles later.

FWIW I'm not sure why the 30+ min. stop & go segment didn't hurt the mpg. But it could be because I was consciously keeping the revs down; hence keeping the turbos from spinning up. BTW this was not difficult since we were crawling anyway.

Funf Dreisig

Unless you were stop and go downhill I can't image the mpg not dropping. I left my dealer on delivery with the mpg stat at 12 from all of the idleing while showing/setting up the features...

How are you getting exact readings on fuel levels when you fill up? The mileage is easy, but if your remaining fuel calc is off, your MPG calcs are going to be off. (I guess ignoring the #'s after the decimal point is a solution)

If you fill the tank completely and to the same number of pump stops every time, you'll get pretty darn close to actual useage. I always round to the nearest .1 of a gallon. On a 500 mile 20 gallon fill up, you'll get within .2 mpg to actual. Close enough in my opinion.

Great info Funf!!

I am a dork with a fuel log too. Just filled up for the second time today, just over 500 miles on my second tank, almost to 1000 miles total. My next tank will not be as good, break in is almost over.:driver:

Obviously if we had not been moving at all the mileage would have gone down. But we were moving very slowly with the engine rarely above 1,200 RPM. FWIW Based on the mileage not going down during the stop & go segment I believe the 35d gets pretty good mileage when it is running between 500-1,200 RPM. IOW before the small turbo "kicks in". Of course the 26.2 mpg had a history of over 60 miles and the stop and go segment was only about 10 miles. So the overall mpg average is strongly weighted to the better 30 mpg during the 50 miles into town.

Funf Dreisig