A-Class 180CDi Fuel Consumption - poor

[Dringo]

I'm interested to know if anyone is as disappointed as me with the A180CDi fuel consumption?

I am averaging, since new, just 40mpg (over about about 7k miles).
I'll get up to about 45mpg some days, but almost never over 50.
On a motorway run it'll drop to 33-36mpg !! I get more out of my 6-cylinder C240 in those conditions.

Its not a bad engine, but not as torquey as I expected and sounds like a tractor. Its a pleasant drive, but pretty mundane on the whole. Decent fuel consumption would make it perfectly acceptable, but 40mpg for such a small, new, car is pretty poor.

I admit, this is not driving at a steady 70mph, nor 30mph around town, but even so.

What are others getting? This car hasn't had a service yet, and I'll be asking them at the MB dealer when it does.

btw - its still a great big, little car.

 

[djb]

Doesnt seem that good, I have had 37mpg on my CLK 320cdi since new, however most of its milage is M way etc., & in many instances on 200 miles plus per journey. If you are using the car for manily stop start then perhaps your figs are not so terrible.

Are your figs derived from actual fills or from the dash, as the only true answer comes from tank full to full calcs.

register (so you see figs in mpg ather than l/100 km) on http://www.spritmonitor.de/en/ and there are 5 pages of similar motors for you to determine if your usage is out of the correct ball park.

One last thought, the engine wont develop its best figs until after at least 15000 miles.

I hope this helps

 

[Casanunder]

Hi Dringo - I have an A180 CDI on a 2005 plate. On an average around-town trip, I'd expect to get 45-50 mpg. On my regular 35 mile motorway trip to work, I routinely get 56-58mpg. On a longer trip of 100 mile or more, I've frequently seen the happy side 60mpg. I'm not a fast driver, mind!

My car has covered just over 50k miles now and I'm sure the mpg has been steadily creeping up since it was new. I'm doubtful whether it was as low as your's though.

 

[jberks]

All depends on how and where you drive.

I've spend the last few months travelling from Leeds to Manchester and back. Each morning I left the house at 6:30 and gently trundled over the pennines. Leaving the house at that time I cruised through Leeds without really stopping, then a 50-75 run over, light traffic into Manchester (arriving at 7:30) and returing 43mpg. On the return, 5:30 - so 10 mph out of Mcr. then, a stuff-it 90mph+ run back up the motorway and a slow crawl back through Leeds - result - 35mpg. So I get +-8mpg difference on the same journey.

Hence - nobody can compare mpg.
If its only done 7k it isn't run in yet so will improve a way yet, but you need to look at how you drive. Avoid traffic - jams kill mpg. Then - gentle with the throttle, use torque, not revs as you would in a 240, change up extra early and view the brake pedal as a fuel dumping device, only to be used to avoid collisions (I kick myself if I have to use the brake pedal on a motorway journey - its a clear indication that I haven't been pre-emptive enough). You'll be amazed at the difference.

 

[Dringo]

OK,
I am back for an update. I had my first service last week. The first time the car has been looked at since new. It still seems weird to me that there is no 1500m checkup these days.
But, no. Everything was fine. I mentioned about the very poor mpg and the very helpful Service manager guy suggested it was probably due to the fact that I had the auto and as a result it is almost always winding up to 2,000 revs plus. Especially if trying to get some zip out of the gutless 2.0l diesel.
I am still averaging just over 40mpg since new and regularly dipping under 40 on my daily checks.
Agreed my driving is heavy footed (no points on my licence mind you) but I like to zip about where I can safely and simply keep up with the traffic in the fast lane on motorways.

Now going to see if anyone else has the problem of bottoming out the A-Class over small bumps.

Cheers.

 

[Cole@MBS]

Remember, its still a tight lump, the mpg wont start to increase untill you start putting some real miles on it!!

 

[Rory]

Agreed my driving is heavy footed (no points on my licence mind you) but I like to zip about where I can safely and simply keep up with the traffic in the fast lane on motorways.

Is it a CVT auto? Certainly heavy footed zippy driving will kill the MPG in a torque convertor diesel auto as so much power is lost in the transmission. I wouldn't have expected the same effect in a CVT though.

 

[LYNALL]

CVT pretty crap on mpg as well, wife had two minis one 51 one 02, both cvt both rarely got more than 30 mpg ever, both petrol, her 3.2 203 doing same work does 25/6 and on a run is same as the minis and the engine is twice the size.


Lynall

 

[Dringo]

Well at least the Diesel price has reached parity with petrol.
Not that I am a penyy pinching type, but I got the A Class to try another model and at the time decided I was fed up putting nearly £70 a time into a petrol car doing 28mpg. But at least that car (C240) was a dream to drive.

A180 is OK, and its new, but just disappointed that the mpg didn't match the brochure!

 

[Rory]

A180 is OK, and its new, but just disappointed that the mpg didn't match the brochure!

The MPG figures come from a Government test, and are actually calculated from C)2 emissions - they don;t measure MPG at all. Of course Mercedes (and all manufacturers) design the cars to give the best results in the test.

It's said that the figures should only be used for comparison purposes but on some cars the figures don't translate well into real-world driving, yet on others they do, so the comparison element is useless.

It's a bit of a scandal really - a car magazine tried to replicate the tests and most cars were way worse than the official figures.

 

[philangst]

OK,
Now going to see if anyone else has the problem of bottoming out the A-Class over small bumps.

Cheers.

All the time! its very low at the front end.

Mines a cvt auto (55 62K miles) and the trip computer shows 35-40mpg on very short daily city commute. I have got it up to 50mpg on a run though. I quite like the cvt auto although it whines a bit and changes are a bit jerky/rumbling after it warms up, i'll mention it at the next service because in the 1st 10 mins of driving its smooth as anything

 

[turbopete]

All the time! its very low at the front end.

Mines a cvt auto (55 62K miles) and the trip computer shows 35-40mpg on very short daily city commute. I have got it up to 50mpg on a run though. I quite like the cvt auto although it whines a bit and changes are a bit jerky/rumbling after it warms up, i'll mention it at the next service because in the 1st 10 mins of driving its smooth as anything

changes? on a CVT? thats a new one on me! last CVT cars i drove (fords and nissans) were Continuously Variable Transmission ie 1 speed box! anyone remember the DAF variomatic? with the bands in the box? CVT is literally the same principle, although probably improved a bit with new technology!

 

[Bigtee]

Come back to us with the fuel figures when you have run it in at about 25k, 7k is nothing and needs to be run in, our car ran better when it got to 16k petrol.

 

[*Thumper]

As Jberks has said ........... and said to me, when I joined the forum ...... the engine needs to loosen up a bit ............ &k miles is nothing, and it's still tight ........... I've done 14,000 miles since, 31st March ......... and I'm seeing improvements every week .......... I've had 52mpg, on a motorway run, recently ............. and 35mpg today round town.

So get some miles on ............. and loosen up that block !!

 

[xavierx]

Hi guys,

As an ex-fleet manager who has studied the long term mpg of various cars, if may be of some comfort to the original poster to know that I have seen diesels in the past on my fleet that have had poor mpg for 30k-40k miles before completly changing into a different car with better power and mpg. This was the exception rather than the norm, I found most cars were running a decent mpg by about 20k, but like I say I did see some take 30-40k. It all depends on how the car is worn in. A diesel needs a very varied life to wear it in properly, a good mix of town/motorway and both careful driving as well as the occasional thrashing through 2nd/3rd.

Also unfortunately I really couldn't rate the Merc 4 cylinder diesels at all. I found that once worn in they were very consistant in their mpg and also very reliable with no major problems between 0 and 90k miles, but I found them to be gutless at low rpm. I had the use of a c220cdi for a while as it was sat around with no driver for a couple of months and found it to be the oposite to most disels I had driven. Whereas VW/Audi/BMW tdi engines tend to give you all of the power really low down in the rev range, I found that the Merc's had no power at low revs and then thew all the power at you in one go - catapaulting the car from 3k to 4.5k rpm. This is much mroe of a problem in the manual than the automatics though for some strange reason.

HTH

 

[hawk20]

Dringo you have described how you drive and that is pretty close to exactly how not to get good mpg. Acceleration kills fuel economy.

The A 180cdi is far from gutless. Look at the perfectly respectable 0-62 figures. You have to choose economy or zipping around.

The A class has an amazingly low drag coefficient of 0.3 but eeven so going over 70 really increases fuel consumption.

The cvt box is excellent on the a class and gives economy remarkably close to the manual. I could get 50 mpg from my A180cdi cvt at 7,000 miles on a run, cruising at 70 mph.

BTW you will find that if you drive in C rather than S you will get quite a lot more miles per gallon.

If you hardly ever go over 2,000 revs with a diesel you will get lots more mpg.
If you only depress the accelerator 1 inch or 25mm you will make plenty good enough progess but will get much better economy than flooring it.

The A180cdi with the CVT box pulls an amazing 40 miles per thousand revs once you get up to cruising speed and is very economical at that. But every time you accelerate the revs go up of course.

The govt figures are about right on the A class IMO. Just remember that extra urban is not motorway cruising at 70 but is at much lower speeds. The figure you can regularly equal or better on a run is the combined figure and I have found this a good guide to every MB I have owned.

 

[Rory]

This is much mroe of a problem in the manual than the automatics though for some strange reason.

There's nothing strange about it - the torque converter acts as a torque multiplier during initial acceleration.

You also don't have the situation where you're caught in the wrong gear - the box just changes down for you.

 

[hawk20]

Whereas VW/Audi/BMW tdi engines tend to give you all of the power really low down in the rev range, I found that the Merc's had no power at low revs and then thew all the power at you in one go - catapaulting the car from 3k to 4.5k rpm. This is much mroe of a problem in the manual than the automatics though for some strange reason.

HTH

Well, how odd. I found completely the opposite both in my CVT A180cdi and in my daughters manual A180cdi. Loads of grunt low down. How else could it possibly pull 40 miles per thousand revs. We cruised to Spain at mainly 75/80 and at a very relaxing 2k revs. If you look at the diagram of torque and power in the brochure it does not back up what you are saying.

Or just go to the MB website and you will see (in technical data) that max torque is available from 1600 to 2600 revs. Perfect. And 0-62 is a quite nippy 10.8 seconds.

 

[philangst]

I quite like the cvt auto although it whines a bit and changes are a bit jerky/rumbling after it warms up, i'll mention it at the next service because in the 1st 10 mins of driving its smooth as anything

Ok maybe I haven't described it quite right as I'm no CVT expert. I've not had the problem checked out yet but from advice on here/other forums it sounds like I may need a replacement torque converter and valve body to fix this

http://www.mbclub.co.uk/forums/engine/71248-cvt-gearbox-class.html

 

[Dringo]

Update:
As mentioned, a year in and the A180CDi is a lot nippier and 'looser' engine now - plus mpg seems to have increased slightly too. Reset for this year and will track overall mpg again - currently 41.0mpg over 6 weeks.