T5 Recharge question

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CDR
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Joined: Sun May 09, 2021 9:01 pm

Post by CDR »

Hi

We are planning on replacing our diesel car with the XC40 r design pro T5 recharge but are getting mixed messages regarding economy so thought I’d ask someone in the know.

Most of our journeys to work will be around 20 miles so should be ok for pure electric, on a weekend we do a 50 mile trip so guessing the hybrid mode.

Then we have a few longer journeys that we do every month (now lockdown is coming to an end) rough examples
•200 mile round trip which is about 50% motorway and 50% a roads
450 mile round trip which is about 90% motorway and 10% city driving

We currently get around 60mpg on these longer journeys but I’m guessing this no longer will be the case because the battery will soon run flat and then the heavy car is purely on petrol. What MPG should I realistically expect?

I know many will think your spending nearly 50000 on a car so don’t complain but I’d like to know before I get the car so I’m not disappointed

Thanks in advance

Bernard Bernardsson
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Post by Bernard Bernardsson »

I'm no help at all, but what is your current car, giving you 60mpg? This is very good mpg, even on a long run. Im lucky to see that from a D4. I guess. It depends how much you can use the pure electric. Be interesting to see the replies from some owners, especially ones who tow a caravan.
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Felindre
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Post by Felindre »

Get the figures for the non recharge T5, this'll give you a good idea how economical the engine is.
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masteretch
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Post by masteretch »

I have a T4 recharge and over the first 1200 miles my average mpg is 62.7 average speed 31mph. I've had it coming up to 2 months and I've been on 3 long journeys of around 150 miles each.
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m@rk
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Post by m@rk »

I have had my T5 Recharge since December and have done about 3500 miles. My wife uses it for the school run 3 times a week (about 24 miles round trip twice a day) and in recent weeks, out runs out at weekends have been getting more adventurous as lockdown eases. I also do the occasional long journey for work (it is a company car after all) and this will increase to every week very soon.

I have a Wallbox at home and if the car is on the drive, it's plugged in charging. Once we are out of lockdown, I expect to be back to doing 25,000 miles per year

So the numbers.

When we were just doing local runs when fully locked down, 70 to 80mpg was a regular thing. More short runs than long but very impressive. Best tank ever was 90mpg!!!

When the battery is depleted then realistically I am seeing around 40 to 44mpg real world range

The important thing to remember is that when the battery is empty, you don't just have a heavy petrol engine car. This is a myth. There is ALWAYS electric power in reserve which the car will use for when pulling away from a standstill or when you put the car into power mode. This power is regenerated when the car is not doing one of those things (such as braking). This is important for two reasons.

First that you always have the maximum 262bhp under your right foot no matter what. Again the myth says that once you have exceeded the 24 mile range of the battery, you only have a heavy car and only have 180bhp. This is simply wrong. You always have the combination of petrol plus electricity under normal driving.

Second, when pulling away from a standstill, this is when any car uses most fuel. By having the electric motor just get it rolling, really does help fuel economy in stop start traffic. This is why the mild hybrids work so well also. That little boost in stop start traffic makes a huge difference to fuel economy.

So right now (and you can see this in my signature) I am getting an overall average of around 65mpg give or take. These are real world calculated numbers not just what the car itself is claiming. If you click through you can see all the numbers. On a long run on the motorway at a steady pace, it can be much more but single journey figures are irrelevant. It's the overall average that matters

To put this into perspective, my previous car was a 2L diesel Mini Clubman. It have 192bhp. It's 12 month average was around 45mpg. Considering my heavy hybrid is getting 40 to 44mpg even when I don't charge it and considering the cost of petrol is less than diesel, put simply, the cost per mile in my T5 Recharge is LESS than the cost per mile in my 2L BMW engined diesel IN THE REAL WORLD!

To me that's a result and once I start to do more longer journeys again, I expect those numbers to increase a little.
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CDR
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Post by CDR »

Many thanks for your responses

We currently have an A3 so a lighter and lower car which is probably why it’s so efficient.

@M@rk thanks and your write up is brilliant, I’ve never seen the fuelly thing before but for giggles I did something similar on my phone, do you know how many kw of electric the XC40 has used through your wall box because I’m guessing the fuelly count doesn’t take this into account. Not sure if this would be visible on the app?
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m@rk
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Post by m@rk »

CDR wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 9:55 am Many thanks for your responses

We currently have an A3 so a lighter and lower car which is probably why it’s so efficient.

@M@rk thanks and your write up is brilliant, I’ve never seen the fuelly thing before but for giggles I did something similar on my phone, do you know how many kw of electric the XC40 has used through your wall box because I’m guessing the fuelly count doesn’t take this into account. Not sure if this would be visible on the app?
I have a Wallbox Pulsar+ at home and this gives me full usages stats. This is important because as I said, my car is a company car and I also have a fuel card so I have to get this right. Also note I am a bit of a data nerd so even armed with paid for fuel, I still log mpg and stuff :)

So each month, I have to submit a report with my miles driven. The system then takes the amount (in money) spent on the fuel card for petrol and I add in the amount (in money) I have spent on electricity by taking the report from the wallbox giving me a total kWh used for the month, multiplying by my cost per kW (15p right now) and adding that. This then generates a total cost of fuel (petrol and electricity), divides that by total miles driven and then spits out a pence per mile. Finally the system works out how many miles were business, how many were private and then works out how much my private miles have cost which is taken off next months salary. It sounds a lot more complex than it really is.

So last month I drove 1179 miles
I spent £144.79 on my fuel card
I used £31.95 in electricity at home

This works out to 14.99 pence per mile. The previous month was 10.51p per mile and the month before with lots more local driving. Note I haven't tried to convert this to an MPG figure as there are too many variables involved. My total average since getting the car is 14p per mile (because surprise surprise I have kept all this in a spreadsheet) however now we are leaving lockdown, the number of longer journeys is starting to increase so these figures will probably change although I am expecting they will change for the better.

For reference

My wife Mini Cooper (which has a 1.5L petrol engine) and only ever does local journeys averages 15.7p per mile over the last 3 years and my previous Mini Clubman (2L diesel) was 14p per mile so as I said, I am more than happy with what I am getting on what is a bigger and more powerful car.
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CDR
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Post by CDR »

Thanks again and this information is brilliant

I’m basing this on my local fuel cost of £5.58 per gallon but last months combined mpg based at 14.99p per mile would only be 37.2mpg and the month before at 10.51p would be 53mpg.

I know you can’t really call this mpg but combining the two costs and calculating the per mile cost you can work out how many miles you would in theory get from a gallon.
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m@rk
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Post by m@rk »

CDR wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 1:41 pm Thanks again and this information is brilliant

I’m basing this on my local fuel cost of £5.58 per gallon but last months combined mpg based at 14.99p per mile would only be 37.2mpg and the month before at 10.51p would be 53mpg.

I know you can’t really call this mpg but combining the two costs and calculating the per mile cost you can work out how many miles you would in theory get from a gallon.
I see your logic. I have seen people try and get to an energy value that is comparable for the two with for example a kW value for petrol but as this is all affected by driving style, weather conditions, traffic conditions, etc etc etc, it would be different for everybody

I think the way you have done it isn't that crazy although again, that cost per kW can vary drastically. If you are on the best overnight tariff then you can get as low as 5p per kW and some public chargers can be closer to 60p per kW

So with exactly the same numbers but a different cost for electricity of say 5p per KW then that would bring the cost per mile down to 13.4p and thus make your mpg figure 41.40mpg for the same car doing the same journey at the same efficiency. Thus you are not comparing like with like here.

If I did the same again but just used the charger at my local Shell garage, at 35p per KW then we get 29.7mpg for the same car using the same amount of fuel

This is why I settled on cost per mile not miles per gallon as the mpg figure is simply not relevant and can't be compared to anything. In your mpg calculation, in one month did the car do 37.2mpg, 29.7mpg or 41.4mpg? In reality it did all of these or none of these at the same time which is why the mpg value doesn't really fit

Aren't numbers fun :)

PS

I can't believe somebody has managed to get me doing math on a Monday
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CDR
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Post by CDR »

I don’t calculate a cost per mile simply because the fluctuation in fuel costs so I just took your value and converted into our current local mpg cost.

This way is logical to me and that’s why I did it, I’m sure they’ll be a proper way of doing this and more than likely some fancy terminology.

It would be like saying someone who only uses electric could say that in the last 12 months I’ve covered 7000 miles but only used £10 worth of petrol so over 3000mpg, impressive but makes no sense.

By the way I’m not having a go and am really grateful for any responses.
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