Those figures from BMW are likely the WLTP figures, which are very much best case scenario - warm day, downhill, being towed by another car, in pure vacuum of space so no air resistance etc etc.

Don't expect to get the advertised range figure. It also enormously depends on how you drive the car, even in a plug in hybrid. If you have a heavy right foot that number will stay low. If you are gentle with the acceleration and you also allow the car to regeneratively brake rather than using the physical brakes then you'll get more range out of it.

If your commute is short, leave it in pure electric mode and see how you go - the range estimate is still just an estimate.

If you use it the way BMW intends, as an extra acceleration boost to the ICE, then you can actually use a bit of the battery pack that is not accounted for in that range figure. There's always a little kept in reserve by the car.

I suspect the battery range will become more accurate as you drive it more. Since it's brand new it doesn't have a lot of data to go on in order to estimate the range, since it does this by looking at historical energy consumption in Watt hours per mile, not simply at how far you can drive.

 

Or…..hard to believe,I know……you have been miss sold a car that will do barely half the publicised range and not a single sales person told you that….probably because you didn’t ask….but they should have anyway

 

You may well get close to 37 miles if you drive like your grandmother on a warm, 25 degrees C summer's day. Race away from a few traffic lights in 3 degrees C and 19 miles sounds about right. Batteries hate the cold. Our e208 can do 170 miles in the summer on the motorway but barely 110 in the winter. That's about 65% of summer mileage. However the brochure says 220 miles so that's half.

 

I think I was just expecting the battery display to say 37 miles at 100% rather than 20 and getting maybe 18

 

You have to imagine your fuel tank getting bigger or smaller depending on the weather and how you drove the car yesterday. You will get a lot more range in warmer weather.

 

I have an older 330e. Set the computer to trip and reset to show you miles per kwh. Drive the car from fully charged until the engine kicks in and check the number ... Will probably be about 2.5
After the ice kicks on this figure is meaningless as the ice makes this number go up....you are doing miles with no electricity used with is nonsense.

See how much kwh it takes to charge from empty to full.

Multiply the 2 together and that gives you the real range, or how many miles the electric is saving petrol. This should be close to the figure on the range display.

The other thing is that car tries to be the most efficient overall. So a 60 mile route might be 20 miles pure electric, 20 miles hybrid, 20 miles ice if you use the sat nav for the destination it changes the profile to make sure you arrive close to an empty batter as it then expects a full charge. If you don't the battery will only run down to about 10% as it want to keep a bit for hybrid driving.

 

Is there a way to get it to aim for 'half' battery used, for the circumstance of going on a round trip with no charging options?

 

Same as my 225xe (bought used though) it said 14 miles on the GOM at 100% charge sales said ah yes that's how it's been driven recently (test blast on motorway !). If yours is just off transporter then it has no data for past driving . Take it easy on the flat (hills kill ev miles) n you will see the GOM increase-its a big learning curve with these Phevs to get the best outta them ! My best GOM has been 29 so far (summer no a.c. n use the freewheel a lot !) PS my 225xe has only a 8kw pack

 

Thanks all. That's very informative and I will check out the earlier threads

 

spare a thought for the new 308 hybrid owners who have never even seen the 32-36 mile battery range since new and now are all getting only 15 which is over a 60% drop on claimed range lol

 

Surely you recognise that your ICE's "Range" figure doesnt display the WLTP figure at startup?

For the past 20 years or so since cars have range indicators, you will have noticed that the car computes how you've been driving for the last few miles, and extrapolates this to provide a range on Petrol/Diesel...

So why would you expect an EV to display the WLTP figure? It would surely cause MORE confusion if it consistently showed "37miles" at startup and you only got 20?

 

Ha, yep! My ICE will start hastily recomputing the range when I get off the motorway and start driving the start/stop urban bit. 100 miles? Pah, forget I said that, so far you're good for.. 65. No, 60!

 

Yeah probably. But after 2 weeks of consistent school runs I would have thought that would have sorted itself. Just getting used to hybrids

 

Another interesting calculation from a website that says I'm not saving any money. I'm still on a fixed rate as well with about 20 p per kilowatt hour. Based on a 7 kW charger

 

All I will be doing a spending about £700 getting a charger installed.

Me thinking this electric lark is all another marketing ploy!!

 

All I will be doing a spending about £700 getting a charger installed.

Me thinking this electric lark is all another marketing ploy!!

With those costs, yes!

But you have a PHEV, so only a small battery and 20 p per kWh to charge it is expensive, even in today's lunacy-level energy market.

I've just renewed into a high-cost energy tariff and I pay 10 p per kWh at night (23:30-05:30) during which time I do the vast bulk of my EV charging. I have a 50 kWh battery in the e208 (about 45 kWh usable).

It doesn't really make sense for you to install a 7kW EVSE at your house for your BMW - it only has a 3.6 kW charger on board (I believe) and even if it doesn't, using a 2.2 kW charger will be much cheaper for you (a couple of hundred at most) and more than enough since you only have a 12 kWh battery in the e330. These are typically called granny leads, although I don't care for the term much since I know some sprightly grannies!

Only go to the expense of fitting a 7 kW EVSE if you want to future proof the house or you're planning to get a second car that is fully electric. You don't really need one for a PHEV, especially at £700 fitted.

Whether you switch to a cheaper electricity tariff that does time-of-use pricing is also a question of whether it would be worth it. For a pure BEV, yes, definitely, especially if you drive every day. For a PHEV, the cheaper overnight charge cost might be offset by the more expensive day rate.

If you can charge at work, however. Bonus!

 

I mean its just math?

Your charging it with fairly expensive electricity (20p) and apparently only getting 1.6miles per kwh (which is really poor!).

I suspect your doing lots of short journeys, so putting a lot of energy into cabin heating rather than moving.

Its worth pointing out your ICE wouldnt be achieving 12p a mile in those circumstances. They're awful for short trips, and at current petrol prices you'd need to be averaging 60mpg to achieve 12p a mile...

As a comparison, my EV is averaging around 2.8m/kwh in this cold weather on my 80mile commute, and gets charged at 8p a kwh, the resulting cost per mile is under 3p a mile...

 

Sorry but the advice here and elsewhere has been to not use a Granny charger for daily use -best to get a proper charge point with its built in protection etc Also during pre climate on cold mornings it's better to have as much power available as possible (The Granny should run at 10amp or less ideally due to plug possibly heating up and therefore can't keep up with the heater power needed and battery will therefore discharge instead!).

 

I had the impression that BMW PHEVs were primarily intended to give improved performance rather than lots of electric only miles. 20 miles fully electric sounds about right in this weather. I suspect if you drive in sport mode the performance will be pretty decent for the ICE engine size. If fully electric driving is your priority may be worth looking at other makes next time.

Unless you are thinking of moving home before you get your next car, in would be worthwhile installing a proper charging point as you may well be looking at a fully electric option by then. You will want to pre-heat before setting off in the winter and will not want to use any of your limited battery range. A proper charging point is also safer.

 

I had the impression that BMW PHEVs were primarily intended to give improved performance rather than lots of electric only miles. 20 miles fully electric sounds about right in this weather. I suspect if you drive in sport mode the performance will be pretty decent for the ICE engine size. If fully electric driving is your priority may be worth looking at other makes next time.

Yes, the had the F30 330e, it was nearly 250HP and still manage to return over 60MPG while my 430i having same power will only return 30ish MPG
the 330e I had would only do about 18 mile pure electric in summer and about half of that in seriously cold winter
the BMW is pretty much a "performance hybrid", giving similar performance without the high fuel bill

 

when I charge the battery to 100% its saying my mileage is only 20 and that drops to 19 as soon as I start. Surely I should expect the battery mileage to show 37 at least at the start and then drop more than usual in cold weather?

The guesswork is a bit smarter that that. It will always have some idea of how much to set a realistic mileage estimate based on the current temperature (actually the battery temperature, which is what matters, and which it will be able to measure accurately). The published figure of 37 miles is based on an optimum temperature more like 30°C.

 

I'm still on what I considered was a good fixed rate for another two years, looking current prices.

 

Agree, for me with a phev it makes sense as I'm on an old very cheap rate overnight, but when it renews at 40p/12p the go tariff is only worth keeping if I also heat our domestic hot water with electricity.

One way of thinking of the battery is each night you put in say 10kwh if that energy is used at the wheels it makes no difference what mode the car is in, it all gets used up. So the secret is always full to empty and charge every night (or every oppertunity). So precondition before departure, and always sat nav home.

The efficiencies are in NOT running the ice at the wrong time. So not used for heating, avoided during stop start urban, preferred during 50mph plus cruising which the car does automatically by default.

If you find you are coming home on certain journeys with battery left and the ice has run, then you can select e max mode which favours the ev before that specific journey.

For most of my driving is short urban, semi rural, with short urban motorways, 2/3 is electric. and i get 45 to 50 mpg on a long motorway run a couple of times a year at 70mph.

I recon that about 40 to 50p per kwh is the break even point for me given the poor mpg I would get on the short journeys.

And if you are staying in the house, get a proper wall charger. First thing I did when I moved and had off street parking.

 

HHHmmm you havnt really "gone electric " though have you .a ridiculouly small battery giving pointless range that needs constantly topping up and i you dont top it up you might as well just drive an ICE car- thats why phevs are pointless IMO they just give EV's a bad name (i think a salesman sold it you rather than you asking for it).my zoe has a 40kw battery does 150 miles(ish) and i charge every 2/3 weeks at home for £5. But it has a BMW badge so all is good eh

 

This debate is a little overdone; but I can see the place in the world for a PHEV. I'm smashing out 230 mile motorway drives quite often, twinned with a load of city driving in Manchester. Currently I'm running a 3.0 diesel Jag, which is Euro V, so it's polluting & unwelcome in London.
I could see the purpose of a PHEV, to get me better MPG on the long run, and full electric running around town; a motorway-range EV is still a damn sight more expensive than the PHEV.

 

If used correctly phev's are good but how many people will use them correctly - that is my issue with them

 

PHEV design has gone backwards a long way, we have batteries sized for the school run mated to 250hp engines. It's annoying that car companies are making such things and people are buying them based on dubious claims of efficency. What we could have had is serial hybrid electric drive 50 - 75 miles with a 100hp engine to give 200+ MPG which depending on driving needs you might only fill up every 3 months or not at all

 

There are several phev now with 50mile+ ranges so would not call that backwards
eg Merc c Class

 

If you look at the best 20 PHEV for electric range, they average out at 42 miles WLTP which means 30 something in the real world and probably 20 something in current conditions. I'm driving an Ampera which is giving me 40 miles at the moment it was designed in 2007 so if not backwards we have not progressed anywhere near as much as we should have.

 

Apples oranges
a Rex is not a phev..


which Rex has advanced from your ampera as much as a current Merc c class from a bmw 330e v1

i think an ampera v2 improved. would sell mega but I don’t think anyone makes one?
I’m excluding the London Taxi btw

 

Q.E.D.

 

GM made a V2 Ampera 60+ miles electric real world and a more efficient petrol engine, they never brought it to Europe.
we have not advanced as much as we should have that's my point, AFAIK there are no serial hybrids being made at the moment, they are all parallel hybrids. As for Apples and Oranges I disagree, they are essentially the same, they all plug in, they all drive on electric / petrol or both. The Mercedes is a good case in point yes it can do 60 miles and get 60+ mpg from its hybrid / 210hp engine. Many hybrids can do 60+ mpg we should be demanding 200 mpg

 

I had a 2015 Golf GTE hybrid and a 6-mile journey each way to work. In the winter, it couldn't do it on battery only. These small battery PHEVs have limitations. Great car, though.

 

Our 2018 BMW 225xe would have done that all electric summer or winter.

 

Still agree with @black_amp that a decent updated Ampera REX is missing from the market.
Really a 125km / 75mile electrons range with a backup power unit, in something that does not cost north of £50k UK.

I like my Kona BEV but the uk infra for proper long journeys is just too shaky.
Tesla product maybe, but too expensive for me.
I may be going back to a SuperPhev (above 50 WLTP) in 2 years time, if there's something Passat Estate size/type by then. Maybe RAV4 PHEV next gen. The Volvos look good but too pricey, ie V60 SuperPHEV.