6 hours ago, Lingnoi said:

Mine works differently. It remembers and stays in Eco.

Look at the gear indicator on the maxidot

 

DSG always starts in D for normal mode

On 6/22/2018 at 08:54, Lingnoi said:

After reading a long thread on here about the MPGs Octy 1.4 TSi owners were getting, I tried an experiment and switched to using D (Normal) mode instead of E (Eco) mode all the time. Surprisingly not only did it not worsen my fuel economy but in actual fact I got better MPG in D than in E!

 

My journeys are all mostly very stop-start on congested 30-40 mph limit roads, perhaps D mode suits these roads better? I'll certainly be sticking to D mode now as the crisp throttle response is too addictive compared to E mode and if there's no fuel consumption benefit, what's the point of punishing myself?

 

On another tangentially related note, a recent long journey from Southampton to Glasgow and back produced 52+MPG (calculated from actual fuel used). I was very impressed to get such good figures from a petrol, especially one that still brings a smile to my face when the torque kicks in. My normal journeys produce 34 MPG or so.

 

I got indicate 65 mpg for my 1.4 TSI DSG yesterday back from Crawley to Worcester, M25 was in a terrible state, 1 hour delays, so went cross country towards Giuldford and the Reading.

 

Car must have been "coasting" in ECO mode for about a quarter to a third of the time and this adds several miles to each gallon of fuel it appears.  

 

Over 600 miles to the tank before filling up with 10 miles range still left on the computer.

 

Car over-reads odometer/speed so probably real low 60 mpg just poodling along at the double nickel 55-ish on the A roads as the UK motorways seem to be saturated and not worth using of a Friday PM.  

 

DSG worth another few tens of miles on the range, when I have had manuals I would sometimes coast them ie on very long hills knock in to neutral and let it coast, not for the faint hearted. 

 

Never brake if one can help it, braking is energy/momentum wasted, unless you drive an EV with recovery systems.  

 

Edited 23 June, 20187 yr by lol-lol

10 hours ago, Novascape said:

The problem I have with eco is that you have to keep on turning it back on every time you start the car to get the dsg into eco mode! 

There have been some  threads on this subject whereby some cars start up in the mode they were left in, others you have to re-select.

 

Mine always starts in ECO.

3 hours ago, themanwithnoaim said:

Look at the gear indicator on the maxidot

 

DSG always starts in D for normal mode

 

Not for my car - the DSG starts in whatever I left it in - usually Eco mode.

1 hour ago, lol-lol said:

 

Never brake if one can help it, braking is energy/momentum wasted, unless you drive an EV with recovery systems.  

 

And even if you do have a car with a recovery system it won't be 100% efficient at giving you all the energy back, so using momentum is preferable if you can.

43 minutes ago, DavidY said:

And even if you do have a car with a recovery system it won't be 100% efficient at giving you all the energy back, so using momentum is preferable if you can.

You can gain 0.3 to 0.4 mpg just by lifting 300 metres before a roundabout and shifting down to fifth or fourth depending on how flexible your engine is. This is for a manual and is similar to the coasting function on a DSG car, avoiding using the brakes if at all possible. I use this technique alot because I use 7 roundabouts when approaching/leaving work. Makes your brakes last much longer and saves fuel without adding any time to the journey as my commute is typically 42/43 mph average and takes 37 minutes in either direction.

1 hour ago, DavidY said:

And even if you do have a car with a recovery system it won't be 100% efficient at giving you all the energy back, so using momentum is preferable if you can.

 

A generator, and motor, is about 90% efficient from converting motion to electricity and back to motion if I remember correctly.

 

A petrol engine, even a direct injection, forced induction one, is about one third efficient in turning the energy in fuel in to motion.

 

A diesel can be about 50% efficient at doing the same so ICEs are well short of the efficiency of electricity, if only, and when, we can store enough electrical power ie more like 300 miles plus worth and 10 minute charging.  Tesla recent price projection.  This Octy 1.4 TSI DSG will probably be my last ICE car .....

 

       

 

I have enjoyed the discussion in this thread and learnt more about the dsg eco mode characteristics but lol-lol does seem to be contradicting himself when his big complaint about the 1.4tsi is the meagre 50 litre tank giving him 500+ mile range but is happy to accept a 300 mile range of an EV??

 

Edited 23 June, 20187 yr by Gerrycan

3 minutes ago, Gerrycan said:

I have enjoyed the discussion in this thread and learnt more about the dsg eco mode characteristics but lol-lol does seem to be contradicting himself when his big complaint about the 1.4tsi is the meagre 50 litre tank giving him 500+ mile range but is happy to accept a 300 mile range of an EV??

 

 

The difference is that I could charge up at where I visit ie my office or a clients office and hence get 600 mile range without wasting time visiting a petrol station.  Also nice that one is not handing over 60 quid to a rich oil company rather than using about a couple of tenners of lecky.

Not convinced an EV is really suitable for your mileage and it presuposses your client always has a high output charge point available for you, that your EV will be able to deliver 300 mile range on a really cold day, or that the government doesn't implement strategies to recoup the enormous amounts of petrol tax they are missing out on. The majority of your 60 pound fill is going to the goverment not the oil company.

2 hours ago, Gerrycan said:

Not convinced an EV is really suitable for your mileage and it presuposses your client always has a high output charge point available for you, that your EV will be able to deliver 300 mile range on a really cold day, or that the government doesn't implement strategies to recoup the enormous amounts of petrol tax they are missing out on. The majority of your 60 pound fill is going to the goverment not the oil company.

 

A 7 kw/hr (same as a home charger) would probably be plenty for what I need to put in half a charge on an average 125 to 175 mile visit to a client I do as based in the Midlands, or so so not even a 22 or 43 Kw/hr charger needed.   EVs are a bit like Mark 3 Octys a complete ******* to get the last bit of energy fuel in to them.

 

It is when the mainstream EVS, which really mean the LEAF and the Zoe, as the Nissan-Renault Alliance have dominated the affordable EV market since the beginning, move to the 60 kWh versions, which should hopefully be in less than a year's time, the EVs become viable transport and more than, economical transport if fuel stays around £1.30 a litre retail.  Indeed around 200 miles would be more like the range in very cold weather but most the time in the mild UK one should be able to get 250 to 300 miles in a 60 kWh EV in the UK climate and, of course, at very low running cost.

 

Only 58p of fuel retail price is excise duty, most fuel bought VAT is paid and reclaimed ( VAT being 1/6th of price indicated at the pumps ie 21p is VAT).  I not even sure how much is paid for my fuel as, so is the case for many and particularly high mileage drivers, I use a fuel card.. Fuel card companies pay a lower price for fuel, by a few pence I gather, than people who pay using their credit card, in part due to the credit card surcharge on the price shown at the pump.  So with VAT and credit card surcharge a minority actually "pay" the full price shown at the pumps.      

 

Lots of ways UK government can collect more tax, and it will get lots of money from import duties post BREXIT.      

  

May replace our Citigo with a Citigo E (300km) in a couple of years.

 

But there's nothing in the pipline yet that would convince me to go EV for my main car. Not enough range and not enough charging points.

 

Lee

57 minutes ago, logiclee said:

May replace our Citigo with a Citigo E (300km) in a couple of years.

 

But there's nothing in the pipline yet that would convince me to go EV for my main car. Not enough range and not enough charging points.

 

Lee

 

We need a car with the a motor aero shape, like the Octy, and at least the 60 kWh battery pack, Nissan must put the EV gubbins in one of their mid-sized car shapes and same fro Renault in Megane.

 

There are almost 17,000 public EV points and thousands more company ones and tens of thousands of private ones on houses.  Public ones being added at around 500 a month.  

https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/ 

 

My company has a £100M contract to add EV points in London so it is big business and only a matter of time when economically, as the charges for entering any big city in anything but an EV or latest spec ICE will be almost punitive for regular visitors. 

 

We are rapidly approaching the inflection point, does not look like fuel prices will be heading back to £1 a litre any time soon if ever.  Governments could do a lot by reducing VAT on EVs to 5% like it is for the fuel ie electricity. 

 

Any road up, pleased with my 1.4 TSI DSG and it will do until those EVs come along and the infrastructure too, especially when Shell etc rollout converting diesel/petrol pumps to EV charge points.    

9 hours ago, DavidY said:

 

Not for my car - the DSG starts in whatever I left it in - usually Eco mode.

So if you left it in Sport it would rev a stone cold engine to a minimum of 3-1/2k revs.

 

Somethings not right with that

10 minutes ago, themanwithnoaim said:

So if you left it in Sport it would rev a stone cold engine to a minimum of 3-1/2k revs.

 

Somethings not right with that

 

Ah you could be right that might be an issue - to be honest I never leave it in Sport so don't know how it behaves.

But I leave it in Eco and it starts in Eco every time.

9 hours ago, lol-lol said:

A generator, and motor, is about 90% efficient from converting motion to electricity and back to motion if I remember correctly.

Sounds reasonable, but batteries are not 100% efficient. Unfortunately I don't have any figures, but I expect more energy is lost in charging and discharging the battery than in the motor/generator.

 

4 hours ago, lol-lol said:

Only 58p of fuel retail price is excise duty, most fuel bought VAT is paid and reclaimed ( VAT being 1/6th of price indicated at the pumps ie 21p is VAT).  I not even sure how much is paid for my fuel as, so is the case for many and particularly high mileage drivers, I use a fuel card.. Fuel card companies pay a lower price for fuel, by a few pence I gather, than people who pay using their credit card, in part due to the credit card surcharge on the price shown at the pump.  So with VAT and credit card surcharge a minority actually "pay" the full price shown at the pumps. 

If you're not paying for the fuel you use, why do you care how much it costs? You seem to be claiming that the majority of fuel is used by people driving company cars (people driving private cars for business use still have to pay VAT). I'd like to see some evidence for that.

There have never have been credit card surcharges for fuel, and they're illegal now anyway. When electric cars become popular you can be sure ways will be found to tax them. I certainly hope so, or the roads will become a lot more overcrowded than they already are.

3 hours ago, lol-lol said:

 

We need a car with the a motor aero shape, like the Octy, and at least the 60 kWh battery pack, Nissan must put the EV gubbins in one of their mid-sized car shapes and same fro Renault in Megane.

 

There are almost 17,000 public EV points and thousands more company ones and tens of thousands of private ones on houses.  Public ones being added at around 500 a month.  

https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/ 

 

My company has a £100M contract to add EV points in London so it is big business and only a matter of time when economically, as the charges for entering any big city in anything but an EV or latest spec ICE will be almost punitive for regular visitors. 

 

We are rapidly approaching the inflection point, does not look like fuel prices will be heading back to £1 a litre any time soon if ever.  Governments could do a lot by reducing VAT on EVs to 5% like it is for the fuel ie electricity. 

 

Any road up, pleased with my 1.4 TSI DSG and it will do until those EVs come along and the infrastructure too, especially when Shell etc rollout converting diesel/petrol pumps to EV charge points.    

 

Next week I'll be doing around 1200 miles through Lincolnshire and then a weekend in the Peak District.

 

I'll be lucky to find a socket to charge my phone.

 

 

Edited 23 June, 20187 yr by logiclee

2 hours ago, themanwithnoaim said:

So if you left it in Sport it would rev a stone cold engine to a minimum of 3-1/2k revs.

 

Somethings not right with that

 

It's been talked about on many threads before.

 

Depends on engine and year.

 

Mine will always start as you switched it off. 

 

So turn off in Sport Mode and gearbox in Sport it will restart in that configuration. Switch off in Sport Mode with gearbox in D and that is what it will start in. Same goes for Eco.

 

Lee

6 hours ago, Rodge said:

Sounds reasonable, but batteries are not 100% efficient. Unfortunately I don't have any figures, but I expect more energy is lost in charging and discharging the battery than in the motor/generator.

 

If you're not paying for the fuel you use, why do you care how much it costs? You seem to be claiming that the majority of fuel is used by people driving company cars (people driving private cars for business use still have to pay VAT). I'd like to see some evidence for that.

There have never have been credit card surcharges for fuel, and they're illegal now anyway. When electric cars become popular you can be sure ways will be found to tax them. I certainly hope so, or the roads will become a lot more overcrowded than they already are.

 

Indeed a EV charger is not 100% efficient but around 90% is the region they are.  Think of the heat waste there would be if they were only 33% efficient like an internal combustion engine.  The ones we, Source London, are installing use 3  phase power and are very efficient.

 

I am more concerned with my dead time in filling stations than the absolute cost though I do get the true cost of the fuel added to my P11D as a benefit in kind and the taxed on it so some hit. Just would like a good old 12 gallon tank at least like we had on the octy 1 and 2 rather than have moved to a fabia sized tank though I actually could get 50 litres in the fabia using the expansion tank button pressing trick.

 

Think of it.  All the buses and trucks buying fuel, paying VAT and claiming it back, even in if half of car fuel used was not company fuel card purchased that percentage of diesel and petrol users retail bought is a small part of the consumers of hydrocarbons. 1,000 litre fill ups for artic couple of times a week.

 

34 million cars in the UK seems to be the plateau.  My company, and we make thousands of cars, do not sell them by rent them in 6 minute slots.  In Paris we have thousands of cars rented in this way. One car was rented 40 times in a day! Charger has to work fast to top it up! We are bringing this to London, already a few hundred cars.  Cars, EVs, rented not bought is a model many are predicting. We are doing similar schemes in many world wide cities.

Edited 24 June, 20187 yr by lol-lol

13 hours ago, lol-lol said:

 

 

There are almost 17,000 public EV points and thousands more company ones and tens of thousands of private ones on houses.  Public ones being added at around 500 a month.  

 

 

I've worked in the electricity generation "Chain" for over 30 years. Currently I run a maintenance team looking after the bigger power stations in the UK for one of the big six.

 

To plan maintenance requirements years in advance we get involved generation prediction studies.

 

There are all sorts of predictions for EV use and charging but as a country we have some serious issues. There is no doubt Maximum demand will increase, as a country we have been poor investing in generation capacity and the 400kV and 132kV grids but here we should be able to keep up as long as the Capacity Market works and planned upgrades go ahead. Partly because of a downturn in heavy industry and partly due to more local generation.

By far the biggest problem is the older towns around the UK many of which grew post war in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Here the 11kV networks down to 415V and 240V to houses (Or 400V/230V if you want to be EU correct)  were all installed using the diversity assumption. Diversity means people use high load items at different times and not for long so load on a street averages out.  Most properties will have between a 60amp and 100amp supply but if most people on the street get home from work, stick the car on charge on top of the usuall peak demand at this time then a lot of the UK's domestic supply network is not going to cope.

 

As usual we still don't have a plan who is going to pay for the upgrades. 

 

And then there are people like my Niece who would love an EV and does short trips. She lives in flats with no off street parking and has a nightmare to get parked on the street. Then she drives to work at an out of town hospital were she parks in a car park with over 1000 spaces if she can get in. If not she parks in a nearby retail park.

She has no chance of getting anywhere near a charging point at home or work. 

And that is the main issue for many, EV's could be half the price of diesel or petrol but if you can't access charging points they are not viable. 

A lot is being done in Cities and across the motorway network but there is a lot more that needs to be done.

 

Lee 

Edited 24 June, 20187 yr by logiclee

13 hours ago, lol-lol said:

My company has a £100M contract to add EV points in London

That's fine for the tiny minority of the UK population that live in and around London, but for the vast majority who live in the rest of the country (sometimes over 100 miles from any city not just a major city) it's a chocolate teapot.

 

For most people EVs need to have a range of 300 miles and a recharge time of 15 minutes or so to meet the current need.

1 hour ago, logiclee said:

 

I've worked in the electricity generation "Chain" for over 30 years. Currently I run a maintenance team looking after the bigger power stations in the UK for one of the big six.   To plan maintenance requirements years in advance we get involved generation prediction studies.  There are all sorts of predictions for EV use and charging but as a country we have some serious issues. There is no doubt Maximum demand will increase, as a country we have been poor investing in generation capacity and the 400kV and 132kV grids but here we should be able to keep up as long as the Capacity Market works and planned upgrades go ahead. Partly because of a downturn in heavy industry and partly due to more local generation.

By far the biggest problem is the older towns around the UK many of which grew post war in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. Here the 11kV networks down to 415V and 240V to houses (Or 400V/230V if you want to be EU correct)  were all installed using the diversity assumption. Diversity means people use high load items at different times and not for long so load on a street averages out.  Most properties will have between a 60amp and 100amp supply but if most people on the street get home from work, stick the car on charge on top of the usuall peak demand at this time then a lot of the UK's domestic supply network is not going to cope. As usual we still don't have a plan who is going to pay for the upgrades. 

 

And then there are people like my Niece who would love an EV and does short trips. She lives in flats with no off street parking and has a nightmare to get parked on the street. Then she drives to work at an out of town hospital were she parks in a car park with over 1000 spaces if she can get in. If not she parks in a nearby retail park.  She has no chance of getting anywhere near a charging point at home or work.  And that is the main issue for many, EV's could be half the price of diesel or petrol but if you can't access charging points they are not viable.   A lot is being done in Cities and across the motorway network but there is a lot more that needs to be done.     Lee 

 

Lots of challenges but we must shut down, for good, all the coal stations,  with perhaps only Drax doing some sort of combo role, improving UK emissions is the goal that must be driven towards considering just how dire the consequences of not doing so. 

 

My background is as a Merchant Navy engineer before joining HMRC and even 30 years ago we had tech to control what devices used power and now the tech is many times better.  Whether one is at home with the car on the drive or attaching the charging lead to a lamppost charger at 6 pm they charging can easily be set to start at 2300 when we turn off the lights and go off to the land of nod and the Nuclear Base load, supplemented by the wind still blowing and the tide still turning   Whenever there is cheaper electricity available, Economy 7/10 is when the charging is done and eventually not only daily fluctuations will be ironed out by weekly ones, charge you EV for free at weekends, charge your home battery packs that replaced that old tech home water radiator system and boiler.  

 

Not sure this is one of is one of our chargers (picture below) but this is the sort of thing.  Might only be 3kWh but could half fill and EV overnight ie for 10 KWh status to near 30 kWh using off peak lecky.   At home the 7 kWH chargers, same as ones shower, drawing 30 Amps so half our a third of a house's ring main power can top that EV ovenight whilst one dreams of a cleaner work where people are not gasping for breath as NOX  or PMs has trigger that person's asthma.  Lots of do and some good progress being made, for me just need that 60 kWh (at least) battery pack and thar is looking like next year.

 

Maybe as a replacement to one of the ICE cars so I run one ICE and one EV until EVs become the complete no brainer but I might also have a house with similar or even greater electricity storage so I but electricity from the grid mainly when it is cheap.  A programmable house management system that buys electrical power on criteria of price and how low my reserves are for the car and house.

 

Any road up, very pleased with the 1.4 TSI sipping the fuel with a litre getting me almost 15 miles.  I find mayself even putting the DSG in to neutral when rolling down hills as the car will dis-engage coast and go to engine braking when I do not want it to so even the 67 mpg Extra urban figure can be beaten with a bit of hyper-mile-ing techniques. over 700 miles out of a tankful is next goal. All helped by Google maps which predicted arrival times to meetings, Skoda navigation is poor in so many ways as well as holding petrol stations that clearly closed down many months ago (cannot make a living in this transforming world) !         

 

     

 

Edited 24 June, 20187 yr by lol-lol

35 minutes ago, SWBoy said:

That's fine for the tiny minority of the UK population that live in and around London, but for the vast majority who live in the rest of the country (sometimes over 100 miles from any city not just a major city) it's a chocolate teapot.   For most people EVs need to have a range of 300 miles and a recharge time of 15 minutes or so to meet the current need.

 

I live in the Midland and most of my journeys are anything up to 200 miles, then stay at the office of mine, or clients, usually for 4 or 8 hours and then drive home.  Rarely I might have to go to Scotland and be up at the 300 mile mark.  

 

So I can charge at home, many of my offices and clients have EV charging stations, free of charge, then drive home again.  I am driving from leafy Worcestershire and in to the highly polluted Heathrow area, we have 10 chargers at LHR. 

 

Most people will charge at home or at work and only grab a 10, 15, 20 minute charge on the go, whilst they have their comfort break, grab a coffee or a McDonalds McMuffin, wireless charging would be nice in the Grill Bay pickup.

 

The incentive of picking up almost free electrical power, compared to a tankful of fuel that cost the average person half a days wages, will win in the end as well as punitive charges on entering cities. 

 

37 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

 

Lots of challenges but we must shut down, for good, all the coal stations,  with perhaps only Drax doing some sort of combo role, improving UK emissions is the goal that must be driven towards considering just how dire the consequences of not doing so. 

 

     

 

 

Coal generation is a non issue for the UK

 

Coal plants only run to provide maximum demand in winter now apart from limited runs to support frequency at the time of this post there is zero coal generation on the grid. In three to four years time there will only be Drax and Ratcliffe. Four of the six units at Drax will be biomass and the other two coal units have not sold out in the capacity market so doubtfull they will run.

Ratcliffe will be the only Coal fired station left and that's because it is the only station in the UK to have SCR fitted as well as FGD and Electrostatic precipritators. So it's emissions will be virtually free of NOx, SOx and particulates. It will only be used for renewable support and frequency response unless there's a spike in gas prices. It can generate 14 TWh a year but more likely to be around 2TWh so even CO2 output is minimal.

 

Of course for Europe and the rest of the world New Coal stations continue to be built because it is still the cheapest form of base load generation when you do not include Carbon Taxes.

Edited 24 June, 20187 yr by logiclee

6 minutes ago, lol-lol said:

Most people will charge at home 

 

The majority of UK drivers do not have off street parking.