Short Review - G20 330e

Discussion in 'General chat' started by Spuffington, Jan 11, 2022.

  1. Spuffington
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    Spuffington Staff Member Admin Site Supporter

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    So today the G05 went in for Baron’s to take a look at some pesky electrical issues. In return I received a brand new 71 plate 330e M Sport with 900odd miles on the clock.

    With 75% tank of fuel (I understand just 40l tank) and an empty battery, I set off from the dealership for the 18mile trip home up the M11.

    Inside is familiar G series stuff. The cabin is a decent notch up from the F series 3 series and apes the X5, albeit not quite as high quality fittings but much better than previously. I at least knew how to use most of the tech, but the main difference being the switch for drive modes which is Electric, Hybrid & Sport. It defaults to Hybrid mode upon startup but you can force electric only or programme in iDrive to always start on electric and run on electric only until the battery runs out.

    I set off home and first impressions were good. Brakes are a bit snatchy with the combo of discs & regen but the power take up is very impressive. It feels very fast from the off even without flooring it. In total it’s about 289bhp from both electric and petrol engine (2l 4 pot). Petrol seemed pretty refined apart from a bit droney on the motorway.

    I managed to gain 2miles of electric range on the motorway which I pretty much then exhausted by going electric only up a hill for a mile at 70mph. I gained another mile in the last 5 which I then used for EV only around the village home. Quite a cool feeling gliding silently around the place! #stealthmode

    Upon parking up at home, Mrs Spuff commented on how smart it looked. I then rummaged around in the boot to find the 3 pin lead and transformer still in its packaging :cautious: So I broke that open and plugged it in for a charge to see how quickly I could get enough juice to get back to the dealership (in theory).

    A few stats:

    Journey to Barons (X5) - 18.9miles - average 37.2mpg

    Journey Home - 18.9miles - average 37.5mpg

    Plugged in at home (09:30) on 10amp socket - 22miles charge in 4hrs. Allegedly it would’ve been a full charge at 15:15 giving me 27miles of range.

    I’ve unplugged it now as I expect to head back to the dealership in a couple of hours and don’t want to overpay the electric that I may or may not use.

    I’ve just done a quick build of the car online - it’s coming out at £47k(!) :eek: On finance it’s working out just £150pcm less than I’m paying for the X5 with the same deposit.

    So far impressed with the tech and wafty stealth mode. Less impressed with overall economy and purchase price.

    Let’s see what the return journey holds.

    My gut feel suggests the best way to run these is on a mix of power by leaving it in the hybrid mode. It needs to give well over 50mpg to be any kind of competition to the 320d IMO.
     
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  2. neemz
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    neemz

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    Spuffman you legend. How the devil are you?

    Excuse me while I google what a G05 is...

    ... Current generation X5. My man. Looks incredible in your profile pic.
     
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  3. Spuffington
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    Spuffington Staff Member Admin Site Supporter

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    @neemz - great to see you back! :)

    Just seeing your other thread reawoken. I’ll get on to reply this evening. Hope life is treating you well though?

    Yeah the X5 is an incredible machine. Loving it.
     
  4. rigeng
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    rigeng

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    I think that's the way it is now, the days of 'cheap' cars look like they have gone for the foreseeable future.
     
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  5. E39mad
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    E39mad

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    These cars only seem to make sense when fully charged otherwise you are just lugging extra weight around with you over a std 320i thus creating more pollution.

    I like the idea of 330e as most of our journeys are less than 40 miles return with 5 or 6 long 100 + mile trips a year at present.
     
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  6. Wynne71
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    Wynne71 WARLORD Site Supporter

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    There is a white 330e over there road from me. Although he has a decent drive with a garage at the end I rarely see the car on there, seems to be on the road for the majority of the time. As such it is never plugged in, so really not making the use of the EV side of things. As @E39mad says, lugging a big battery around for limited gain. I can only assume it is a company car for tax purposes.
     
  7. Paul Markwick
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    Paul Markwick

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    330e is a P11d tax beater. Real world fuel consumption is not great. Much better and cleaner with a Euro 6 diesel engine.
     
  8. Spuffington
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    Spuffington Staff Member Admin Site Supporter

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    So a short update:

    I plugged in for 4hrs yesterday which gave me 22miles range. Only it didn’t. When I unplugged and turned on heated steering wheel and seats, that dropped to 21miles.

    However I set off in full EV mode and drove to pick up my son from nursery - a 10.2mile round trip. I got back with 9miles of battery showing. This meant I’d dropped 2miles somewhere along the line.

    Overnight I charged fully and was left with 27miles showing on the dial today. I’ve just been into Saffron Walden in default hybrid mode, which gave me 40% power in EV mode and was in it the whole 7.5m return trip. I’ve returned with 19m showing on the battery which is as near as dammit to the range I was given. Not bad. Not once did the engine cut in or feel like it was required - the torque from the electric motor did a grand job keeping up to 60mph NSL roads.

    Just those two trips verifies how well suited the car is to our typical usage pattern. We’re pretty rural but the majority of our trips are within 25miles. Given a full charge is something around 6hrs this marries up nicely with school / nursery run times such that an EV or PHEV would work very well for us.

    Currently averaging 2.2m per kWH which I understand is roughly the equivalent of 88mpg.

    I agree, if it’s not topped up then fuel economy is poor, but used correctly, this would work well for us.

    The X5 45e is far too expensive to make any sense for us given the 30d is averaging 33mpg (and up to 43mpg on a run) in order to pay off the £7k+ premium on a new car. But it will be interesting to see how these evolve as I come to the end of the PCP in 3-3.5yrs time.
     
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  9. Paul Markwick
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    Paul Markwick

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    Yep, if your regular drive is less than 22 miles, this makes a lot of sense. In fact DfT data says 80% of us regularly drive less than 25 miles a day.
     
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  10. Spuffington
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    Spuffington Staff Member Admin Site Supporter

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    So the 330e is back with Baron’s. I really liked it, but I was delighted when I climbed (literally) back into the X5.

    I kind of went for it on the way back and didn’t hang around, since I was a) short on time and b) wanted to see what the true hybrid was all about. It was all very seamless and unimpressive - that’s to say - it didn’t feel like I was driving anything other than a normal ICE save for some differences in ambient noise when the engine kicked in and out.

    Annoyingly I forgot how to reset the Individual trip meter when I first got it so didn’t get to read all the stats for my short period of running it (totalling 56miles or so), but the below shows that I was at or in excess of 90mpg over the period recorded.
    E8FDE78A-8049-44A7-AEFB-DE18CE5700FF.jpeg
    I’m not going to delve properly into the maths but I reckon I spent £2.88 on electricity and less than a fiver on fuel. So in total it cost me let’s say the same as a gallon of unleaded.

    On the basis of very, very average maths, I’m at 55-60mpg equivalent over the last two days and 56miles.

    Considering the power available (believe me it shifts when you floor it!) and the fact it wasn’t charged when I first got it, which would’ve improved the numbers further, that’s pretty good going. Add to that the fact that I’d be able to do 90% of my daily mileage on electric alone, it’s a very viable and interesting proposition.

    The car showing 90mpg average wouldn’t surprise me if you used it properly. Harry Metcalfe ran an X5 45e last year for about 6months and he reckoned he averaged 65mpg over that time by using the PHEV properly and that was with the remark that the car was over-engined in his view and that BMW could have swapped the 3l I6 for something smaller and more efficient again to improve even further the mpg.

    Anyway, my first experience with EV/PHEV has been a good one. It would really work for us and is very tempting, but not for two reasons currently:

    - I’m firstly very early on in the X5 pcp and would be financially ruinous to change now
    - at £200pcm premium to the 30d, even with 65mpg average against the 33mpg for the 30d, I’d still be £94 per month worse off with the PHEV.

    So for now I’m very pleased to have a quick look into the future and will definitely keep my eye on how it evolves, but given I don’t commute into a low emissions zone or have a company car allowance to play the P11d game, or have sufficiently high environmental aspirations, it is uneconomical for me. Which is a shame.
     
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  11. MarkGray
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    MarkGray Site Supporter

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    Nice review Spuffington, definitely something to look at for the future, when i was in the showroom waiting to collect the keys back to mine, they had one of the new iX40's in, I'm not sure on it, very weird looking, both inside and out....hopefully by the time i am ready to change to hybird or full electric the design may have grown on me.
     
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  12. Peter
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    Peter WARLORD

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    Thanks for the brief reports Duncan. More food for thought.

    You raise a few key points and issues which go through my mind when considering my next vehicle. 330e Touring does make a lot of sense for my use, but not yet convinced it would be the correct purchase.

    Peter
     
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  13. f30paul
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    f30paul

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    The g20 330e has a much better electric range than my f30 version, but it is also less efficient when using fuel, your review figures are around what I’d expect from it, but having had nearly 2 years of use of mine, it’s definitely more efficient to run it in hybrid mode, let it decide what to do (usually over 50 turns on engine). Also for these models, Comfort puts a couple of electric miles in (so mpg suffers for the first few miles of a journey quite badly), whereas eco pro doesn’t do this, instead it will coast at the earliest opportunity - I suppose saving fuel in a different way.

    I really like the balance and performance of the 330e, and average commuting mpg is 65, weekends mpg is n/a. And this is with an electric range of 16-20. As it stands I can’t see a better option for my next car other than the g20 330e.
     
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  14. f30paul
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    f30paul

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    probably also worth pointing out both for the f30 and g20 models, when you’ve zero electric miles left, you still get the performance boost (it’s reserved power) so you’re never really lugging round a heavy battery for 320i performance - it’s much faster than that.

    Though rightly you say, not at all efficient.
     

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