[MrSlacker]

I have a 2011 328xi Automatic. We purchased the car with about 85K miles in Sept and it currently has around 88K Miles. I do not have any prior service history and my buddy at BMW said that nothing was done by BMW since 36K miles.

My wife daily drives it to work about 15 miles each day. Her commute it mostly slow traffic and city streets. She is not a very aggressive driver.

In her daily driving conditions, she is able to get only about 220 miles out of the tank. There is probably another gallon left before she fills up again so 220/15 comes out to only 14.67 MPG.

I recently took the car on a 300 mile road trip. Cruise control was set to 75MPH. Absolutely no traffic the entire way. According to the car MPG meter, I averaged about 27 MPG.


Tires are 225/50/17 winter tires. Inflated to 35PSI.

Oil changed 1,000 miles ago.

Our old E46 330xi auto would get around 32 MPG on highway trips. Am I crazy to think that our E90 should be about the same?


Do these MPG numbers look fine to you or should I start looking into possible issues?

[631twentyeighteye]

The town mileage sounds low but highway is normal(I get 25-26 on highway)

Have you been with her on her work commute? Sounds like she's thrashing it in sport mode LOL.

[MrSlacker]

Originally Posted by 631twentyeighteye

The town mileage sounds low but highway is normal(I get 25-26 on highway)

Have you been with her on her work commute? Sounds like she's thrashing it in sport mode LOL.

LOL! I know she doesn't. Her commute is Van Wyck & Grand Central Parkway during rush hours... Its all stop and go traffic.

[631twentyeighteye]

That makes sense. Mpg goes down drastically in traffic like that, especially with an auto as the engine is always under load in drive.

If you're concerned you can look at the o2 fuel trim readings(Torque, good obd2 scanners, etc). If one is reading drastically different than the others you know the culprit.

I don't think anything is wrong though.

[Taskmaster]

AWD, winter gas and snow tires will bring down mpgs. I get low 30s (according to the dash gauge and computer) on the highway going 70-85mph.

[rick100]

Originally Posted by MrSlacker

I have a 2011 328xi Automatic. We purchased the car with about 85K miles in Sept and it currently has around 88K Miles. I do not have any prior service history and my buddy at BMW said that nothing was done by BMW since 36K miles.

My wife daily drives it to work about 15 miles each day. Her commute it mostly slow traffic and city streets. She is not a very aggressive driver.

In her daily driving conditions, she is able to get only about 220 miles out of the tank. There is probably another gallon left before she fills up again so 220/15 comes out to only 14.67 MPG.

I recently took the car on a 300 mile road trip. Cruise control was set to 75MPH. Absolutely no traffic the entire way. According to the car MPG meter, I averaged about 27 MPG.


Tires are 225/50/17 winter tires. Inflated to 35PSI.

Oil changed 1,000 miles ago.

Our old E46 330xi auto would get around 32 MPG on highway trips. Am I crazy to think that our E90 should be about the same?


Do these MPG numbers look fine to you or should I start looking into possible issues?

there is your problem, it does not matter if she is an aggressive driver or not. It's impossible to say something is wrong with your gas consumption because there are too many variables in traffic
Also 27mpg is pretty good . My awd does the L/100 KM calculation , so 27 mpg would be around 8.7liter/100 km which is what I get in my AWD highway only .

I remember when my wife used my car for work ( the first 6 months) she only drove city and during rush hour ( although it was not bad traffic ) and she was averaging 15 mpg. Once I took over I started doing 19 mpg between city/highway ( 60/40) , now I do mostly highway (30/70) and it went from 19 mpg to 22/23 mpg...

I find these cars are pretty good in highway or around 45-50 MPH , but they are bad if you are in traffic only.

I would say nothing is wrong with your car based on what you are getting on the highway which is the best way to measured your gas consumption because your car is steady at one speed


Another thing I noticed is that girls may not be aggressive drivers but they step over the gas pedal too much , like they don't know how to cruise. An example of this is my wife may be going downhill at 50 mph and there is a red light in front , she still step on and off the gas instead of letting the car cruise and she still drives slow or there is a car slowing down far away and she ll step a bit on the brake , then gas again

[Kevin52]

I would say those numbers aren't unreasonable given the commute. Just 2 days ago I went 44 miles in a quarter of a tank! Good thing gas is cheap.

[MrSlacker]

I will check O2 sensors just to be sure. Thanks for making me feel better, I was starting to get worried lol.

[hassmaschine]

our 2006 325xi gets 30+ on the highway, about 20 in the city

[Volasko]

That seems normal for typical cold ambient temperature driving. That coupled with the x-drive power-train (all those bearings & joints need to warm up) and multiple short distance driving would explain the difference you are seeing.

[E90joee]

seems about right to be honest i drive from lie to grand central to van wyck almost 12 miles going to jfk airport and back 4 days a week apart from going out and errands i put in half a tank everytime i need to fill up and get 19mpg city

[bmw325i]

I go through a tank in about 200 miles driving aggressively in town. I would imagine stop and go traffic would be just as bad. On the highway I usually get around 450 miles out of a tank.

[Spensaur]

Seems typical for my 2007 328i

[paulm3251]

I don't see an issue. If she gets shitty gas mileage in stop and go traffic in an AWD car on winter tires...that's normal and I'm guessing its heavier then the E46 and the gearing could be slightly different as well. I live on long island I have been in stop and go belt parkway grand central cross island etc traffic so I know its brutal. Your getting 27MPG on the highway which isn't too terrible...if your highway MPG was like 18 then I would say something is definitely wrong. If you want to do simple things...spark plugs, air filter, clean the throttle body and MAF, etc maybe some Shell V Power with the cheap gas prices and a bottle of fuel system cleaner & stabilizer as well to maybe see if it goes up a little bit do that but outside of that...things seem normal.

[MTTH]

Lol same car, same mileage, same purchase date, same problem.

[Eagle1oh7]

I couldn't get about 17mpg last fillup, I refilled when I burned the fuel away with Shell VPower and it's giving me up 320-330 miles(90% stop-go).