Hi all,

I just bought a 2009 A4 (base line) about a week ago. (I'm also a newbie, so perhaps I should throw in a post in the newbie area ). This is the first time I've ever owned/driven a car in this price bracket and the first time I've ever driven a non-manual transmission car (I would have purchased the standard transmission but they dont come out till next march apparantly).

The first few days I drove the car, I drove it in "automatic" mode just to get used to it, and one of the things I noticed is that my gas consumption on short hops (5/6 miles to work w/ a quick hop on a freeway) (just by watching the 'miles left' gauge) seemed to be suspiciously high.

The manual says that on a cold engine the car can get as low as 7 mpg in the beginning so I think that is the source of it.

Over the last few days I have been leaving the car in 'fake manual' mode and have noticed that my gas consumption seems a lot more reasonable.
I don't have any figures to back this up but at some point will spend a week in each mode just to try and gauge this.

My gut instinct on this (and correct me if I am wrong, because its quite possible this is just wrong) is the automatic mode, has more or less fixed MPH / gear shifts. It seems to gear shift at super low RPMS (like right at 1800). What I think is going on is (1) these super low RPM changes dont let the engine warm up fast enough so I am just consuming gas from having a cold engine. (2) This may be wrong - the super low gear changes are making me subconciously pump fuel into the engine to get it to accelerate which it does half-heartedly since its at too high of a gear.

I have noticed when I drive in manual mode, I do it a bit on hearing but dont really change gears until I hit about 3K and really use the gears to torque rather than dumping in gas.

My question is does this make sense to you guys? Should it really make that much of a difference? Does either the cold engine in auto mode not heating up causing fuel consumption or the involuntary dumping in of gas because the gear changes are not setup for acceleration make sense?

As an aside, I am not really sure how I feel about the whole triptonics thing. The no clutch shifting is really awesome, its seemless and certainly not laggy in anyway, but I do miss knowing what gear I am in on intuition, the typical examples of this is having a sense of my speed and being in the appropriate gear, given the speed. I think i'll get used to this at some point but I feel like I do stare at the "M[1-6]" thing on the dashboard much more than one should given the fact that one is driving. Its possible at some point I'll be able to do it by sound alone I suppose.

The other thing i dont like is the speedometer, do we really need a speedometer that goes to 180? +/- 10 mph is a blip on the meter. What i really like is the handling on the car. Its what sold me on the car (and the sheer aesthetics, easily one of the most beautiful modern cars I have seen, more than what i wanted to spend but certainly worth it).

 

Im guessing you have the CVT (front wheel drive) model?
Yes any tiptronic automatic transmission with a 2.0T/3.2L engine does shift through the gears at a lightning fast pace but thats not the cause of the excess fuel consumption.
Both of these engines are direct injection (like a diesel) so they tend to use a but load of fuel upon cold start, but they use a lot less gas once they are warm than a traditional fuel injected engine.
I would start your car in the morning and let it warm up a couple of minutes before taking off, this should increase your fuel mileage.

 

the driver's information display located in the middle of the instrument cluster lets you play around with the info displayed. on my car, I can select real time MPG, or accrued MPG. Not sure if the A4 has the same info display though...

 

Its actually the 2.0T Quattro. Unfortunately I dont think the baseline quattro has a way to get the "drivers information" real time MPG info. (the switch I think is on the windshield wiper blades on the prestige plus and above)


I have done a few long distance drives and I am certainly getting about 30 mpg on the highway but the short hops to work I am guessing is at about 17-18 mpg (at least in "automatic" mode) which is much worse than i had thought it would be. To some extent I've got to just chaulk off the gas consumption for these hops or buy a scooter I suppose.

 

then maybe just use the manual mode instead of the matic in addition to modifying how you drive to get the most mpg out of it. i too feel the pinch at the pump these days (who doesnt?!), and driving an S4 with a 4.2 V8 doesnt help in terms of trying to save gas. I resist the temptation to drive fast all the time. Believe it or not, Accords, Camrys and even Priuses fly right by me all the time. But I am more concerned about saving $$$ at the pump than showing off how fast my car is. I can certainly blow those mediocre cars into the weeds, but i choose not to because I choose to save gas. I coast down hills and when coming to a red light. i try not to accelerate hard and i drive the speed limit whenever possible. Slow? yes. Boring? Mostly. But I know my car is more than capable than that. Its just i choose restrain and its worked for me so far.