The MK6 Fuel Consumption (Most / Least per Tank) Thread

[Hail]

My GTI - City driving including short trips I get 570-610 every week (owned the car for 7 months now).

My best was 670 which included approx 1/3 of hwy driving.

[cameronp]

118TSI fuel consumption thread

Not such a long time ago in a galaxy far away (the TSI engine failure thread) a couple of people posted their fuel consumption and I was surprised at how much better mileage some people were getting than me. I'm curious to hear from other owners in an attempt to find out whether my car is atypical or whether I'm lead-footed / driving in very different circumstances to them.

I did some experiments on mostly-flat sections of highway on a still day, air conditioner off, setting the cruise control, resetting the trip computer and seeing what the average consumption over 20-25km was:

Cruise at 100 km/h: 5.4 L/100km.
Cruise at 110 km/h: 5.6 L/100km.

This seems somewhat at odds with a recent long weekend roadtrip around Margaret River and Pemberton where I averaged 7.5 L/100km over 1300km in three days.

Driving around Perth and suburbs I'm usually seeing 8-10 L/100km depending on traffic and lead-footedness. On long mostly-freeway trips I can get that down to 7 L/100km or maybe high 6's. These are figures off the "trip computer 1" display that resets automatically after not driving for a while.

I've been using 98RON fuel almost exclusively. I'm on a tank of Caltex Vortex 95 at the moment and can't tell any difference in fuel consumption or performance compared to 98. Car has around 5000km on it at the moment.

Any other owners care to comment what kind of mileage they're getting, whether the above sounds abnormal or about as expected?

[bmck]

I use the AccuFuel app on my iPhone to log every fill-up since the car was new. I have done 12,000 km since December and am currently sitting on an average of 7.2 l/100km since new.

Fuel consumption has been getting slightly better as expected.

I usually do a one-hour each way commute from one side of the city to the other three times per week - a mix of 80 km/h and stop/start. I also spend about 10% of my time in Sport mode.

As can be seen here, I occassionally venture into the low 6s on a long trip....

[Corey_R]

I'm curious to hear from other owners in an attempt to find out whether my car is atypical or whether I'm lead-footed / driving in very different circumstances to them

I did a search on consumption and found two other threads on this exact same topic (even had 'consumption' in their title!). So I merged all three into one and gave it a good name. You'll find more responses to your question by reading back through these pages.

[clubbie]

Just filled up today 43 litres driven 493kms. So that equates to 8.7l/100kms all city driving. Not bad comprared to the Mazda SP23 which used 11+l/100km. Reckon I squeezed about a litre more in this fill. I keep records so short fills and overfills will sort itself out over time.

I know someone will say RTFM (but I am lazy) but how can you pull up litres used on the MFD so I can compare to actual litres put into the tank.

Cheers

[prise]

118TSI with DSG, mixture of freeway and bumper to bumper traffic, 413litres and 6453 km. Works out to around a 6.4 l/100km average with it ranging from a best of 5.8 and a worst of 7.6. The consumption has been coming down so I now get in the low 6's most of the time. Rapid acceleration doesn't seem to hurt the economy much unless you start using full throttle. It uses fuel cut down to fairly low revs so minimising use of the brakes and lifting off throttle early coming up to lights gives a real improvement. I probably carry more corner speed than most which is good for economy/fun (bad on tyres though).

[cameronp]

clubbie, that sounds similar to what I've been getting. I notice you've got the sports pack too. I wonder if the different wheels and suspension makes much of a difference. Or if it's indicative of driving style

118TSI with DSG, mixture of freeway and bumper to bumper traffic, 413litres and 6453 km. Works out to around a 6.4 l/100km average with it ranging from a best of 5.8 and a worst of 7.6. The consumption has been coming down so I now get in the low 6's most of the time. Rapid acceleration doesn't seem to hurt the economy much unless you start using full throttle. It uses fuel cut down to fairly low revs so minimising use of the brakes and lifting off throttle early coming up to lights gives a real improvement. I probably carry more corner speed than most which is good for economy/fun (bad on tyres though).

That's impressively better than what I've seen. Have you had the 'recall' software update applied to your car? Did it make any difference to fuel usage at all? Also, I presume you're doing mostly long trips? (My drive to work is a bit under 5km, and usually the temperature gauge is only just nudging warm by the time I get there. Always get terrible mileage as a result.)

Just calculated my overall average, 399L for 5061km gives 7.9L/100km. Probably 90% of that would be non-commuting, i.e. light traffic suburban or highway driving.

[clubbie]

Cam

Yeah the economy is not sensational as the car just begs to be driven "enthusiastically". LOL

Funny part is the first fill after delivery was nearly 10l/100km. Made sense with handover and car idling lots. So getting better with each tank.

Looking forward to Saturday when I am doing a trip to the Riverland and back - about 500k almost all highway. Just filled up tonight so I will fill up when I get back. I am expecting low 6's.

[prise]

Have you had the 'recall' software update applied to your car? Did it make any difference to fuel usage at all? Also, I presume you're doing mostly long trips?

Yes I've had the recall SW for a couple of months now and its made no difference. I car pool so the car alternates between doing nothing or doing a 42km trip each way plus a few short local trips. The average speed is around 40km/h.

The following link will give you an idea as to what other owners (mostly in Europe) are getting from a 118 TSI with DSG.

http://www.spritmonitor.de/en/overview/50-Volkswagen/452-Golf.html?esearch=1&fueltype=2&vehicletype=1&power_s=118&power_e=118&gearing=4

[prise]

I did a search to see what 118TSI DSG overseas owners are averaging (see the following link) and its about 7.7 l/100km.

Overview: Volkswagen - Golf

[Diesel_vert]

Interesting site. Using the search function, I compared Superbenzin (95) and Super Plus ( 98 ) between various Mk5 and Mk6 engines, but there doesn't seem to be much difference in consumption rates. The highest average difference I saw was less than 0.25 l/100km.

And as noted in the 118TSI engine failure thread, if lean-burn has indeed been disabled or deleted for the Australian market, then our consumption rates will be higher than what the Europeans can achieve, given that our petrol is still only Euro 4 (50 ppm sulphur).

Also, I hope people aren't forgetting to check their tyre pressures, and to add 0.3 bar (4-5 psi) if the car's been driven for more than 2 km.

[prise]

VW's self study material for the dual charger engine mentions homogeneous mode (lambda 1) as a feature of the engine, describes the lambda probe as being the 'step type' and the catalyst as being the normal '3 way type' with no mention of NOx storage. Therefore I don't believe the engine has been designed to run lean burn. If it was running lean burn in other markets then a wide-band lambda probe would be required along with a NOx storage catalyst and there is no evidence of their fitment in other markets.

[Diesel_vert]

Hmm, I see. That might explain why they changed to the meaning of the acronym TSI from "Twincharged/Turbocharged Stratified Injection" to "Turbo Straight Injection".

[prise]

I checked the data on the OBDII connector for my 118 TSI yesterday and it looks as though the lamda probe has been changed to a wideband type for the current model however there was no evidence of lean burn occurring and in fact on wide open throttle and high revs I saw the lambda drop as far as 0.8. According to a friend who calibrates ECU's for a major manufacturer, the wideband probes only cost the manufacturer 30 dollars or so more than the older step type and enable better control so they are now becoming common fitments.

The other interesting comment he made was that with a small capacity forced induction engine, the effiiciency benefits from running lean burn are minimal compared to a large capacity naturally aspirated engine and the cost of the expensive NOx storage catalyst can be more easily absorbed in the cost of more upmarket vehicles. This would explain why BMW have gone down the path of lean burn for some of their models although not for the Australian market as our sulphur levels mean that the NOx storage catalyst wouldn't last the distance. I have heard of a grey import 5 series with lean burn running on BP ultimate but until the 5ppm level is mandated (which won't be happening anytime soon) we won't be seeing lean-burn engines downunder.

[clubbie]

Well just got back and filled up 36l and travelled 503kms at an Average of speed of 89km/h. Dash said 7.2l/100 and actual was just a bit less.

Not fantastic but the cruise was set to 116km/h which was 110km/h by the GPS. Car has less than 2k on the odo.

Now 450k's of the kays were highway and the rest city/town (estimated). Was expecting the avg to be in the sixes. BTW I was not driving for economy.

As per my earlier question is there a way of pulling up litres used on the dash. Cheers.