Photo: BMW
Last week, a study done by the International Council of Clean Transportation (ICCT), a group we've never heard of before this article was published, claimed that most manufacturers have considerable differences between the claimed fuel consumption figures and the 'real-world' ones.
That wouldn't've been a surprise, as we know some manufacturers that actually do such things. What surprised us most was that German companies were the worst, according to them. That got us thinking.
Has the German myth of perfect engineering been destroyed or they have some other reasons behind their rankings (that favor Japanese and American cars)? ICCT claims that out of the 3 major manufacturers in Germany, Mercedes claims were off 26%, Audi 28% and BMW 30%!
Well, that is absolutely not true. Nobody knows how these tests were conducted, nobody was there to witness them and such rumors are enough to ruin sales for various models. However, we know as a fact that the fuel consumption figures BMW claims are dead on.
How? Well, we have a couple around the headquarters. For example, one of our company cars is a BMW E83 X3 with a 3-liter diesel engine, hooked to an automatic gearbox and the xDrive system.
According to BMW ratings, the car should return 24.2 mpg (9.7 l/100km) whilst driven on busy city streets and that's exactly how much it returns. And our numbers aren't based on a month or two of driving and measuring fuel consumption figures, they are based on a 6 year run, during which we've done every possible thing with this car.
We drove it fast, slow, anything! And guess, what, it still returns the MPG claimed in its user manual. That's a fact.
So, what's there to be said about these so-called 'tests'? Well, we are all in favor of various tests, meant to determine if one or more manufacturers are lying but they have to be honest, and avoid tipping the scales in one way or another.
Furthermore, all of them should be conducted by renowned agencies or institutes that earned their right to pass judgments and influence the public opinion on such matters.
Has the German myth of perfect engineering been destroyed or they have some other reasons behind their rankings (that favor Japanese and American cars)? ICCT claims that out of the 3 major manufacturers in Germany, Mercedes claims were off 26%, Audi 28% and BMW 30%!
Well, that is absolutely not true. Nobody knows how these tests were conducted, nobody was there to witness them and such rumors are enough to ruin sales for various models. However, we know as a fact that the fuel consumption figures BMW claims are dead on.
How? Well, we have a couple around the headquarters. For example, one of our company cars is a BMW E83 X3 with a 3-liter diesel engine, hooked to an automatic gearbox and the xDrive system.
According to BMW ratings, the car should return 24.2 mpg (9.7 l/100km) whilst driven on busy city streets and that's exactly how much it returns. And our numbers aren't based on a month or two of driving and measuring fuel consumption figures, they are based on a 6 year run, during which we've done every possible thing with this car.
We drove it fast, slow, anything! And guess, what, it still returns the MPG claimed in its user manual. That's a fact.
So, what's there to be said about these so-called 'tests'? Well, we are all in favor of various tests, meant to determine if one or more manufacturers are lying but they have to be honest, and avoid tipping the scales in one way or another.
Furthermore, all of them should be conducted by renowned agencies or institutes that earned their right to pass judgments and influence the public opinion on such matters.
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