BMW Active Tourer in SPORT mode: sometimes you might even forget it’s a family car
When I promised a sequel to the second blog post about my experience with BMW Active Tourer PHEV, I did not expect it to take more than four years to deliver on that promise. Autoworld has changed a lot since then and EVs and plug-in hybrids have become much more common than back in 2018. Never mind, let’s get going….
Recap
Given the long break between the articles, let’s start with a short recap. I summarized my fresh experience with the new car in two installments:
First Month of Active Touring — jgergic-tech.blogspot.com
My first impressions and reasoning behind buying this particular car.
Coasting Like a PRO — jgergic-tech.blogspot.com
Overview of multitude of BMW driving modes and how I tried to achieve the best fuel economy.
The first SPORT ride
Following the manufacturer’s advice to let the engine burn in before stressing it under heavy load and given quite a high ratio of EV-only trips I only managed to get the Active Tourer for its first sport ride after over four months of ownership in early June 2018.
I took the car to Křivoklátsko because I knew that part of our countryside very well. The Berounka river valley cuts deep into the terrain and that offers plenty of opportunity to enjoy twisty roads going up and down the river valley including several serpentines. Simply speaking, these were ideal conditions to test how the car drives when pushed close to its limits.
I switched to SPORT mode on my way there already and with the first road turn came a surprise: I almost did not make it through the bend! The breaks behaved differently. In retrospect, it all makes sense. While in COMFORT and ECO PRO modes, the breaks are quite sharp, and you only need to push the pedal gently, in SPORT mode, the breaks become much more linear, less overpowered and offer a finer level of control thus avoiding engaging ABS accidentally.
Also, the steering wheel in SPORT mode is stiffer and there is no mushy wiggling around the center position which plagues COMFORT and ECO PRO modes at higher speeds. The SPORT mode engages the rear wheels more and the overall driving characteristic becomes balanced and neutral — true to its all-wheel-drive spirit, while COMFORT and ECO PRO modes behave more like a front wheel drive at higher speeds. The all-wheel drive system allows for tightening of the bends by hitting the accelerator pedal, rather than steering, which is neat. The electric engine nicely mitigates the turbo-lag of the ICE engine, making its linear throttle pedal reaction like driving a naturaly aspirated ICE engine with large displacement.
While already on my way back to Prague, I came across a long stretch of straight road, and I decided to try 0 to 100 km launch. According to the official spec, the BMW Active Tourer PHEV is supposed to make launch from 0 to 100 km in 6.7 seconds. Besides keeping the car in SPORT mode, I also flipped the transmission into the sport mode. I installed Speed Logic Lite on my cell phone to measure the launches and did four runs in both directions.
I averaged 7.22 seconds, so roughly 0.5 second longer than the official spec. I can only speculate what caused this difference, I did not remove any extra stuff from the car, so the launch test was with “child seats included.” Also, I was running on RON 95 (corresponding to 91 PON rating in the U.S) while the BMW B38A15M0 engine has a compression ratio 11:1 so it could potentially benefit from higher octane gasoline for higher output. Anyway, I find the Active Tourer’s power train adequate for most of my needs. Note that 0 to 120 km still averaged below 10 seconds at 9.22, which I find quite amazing.
The overall road trip took 140 km with an average speed of 74 km/h and fuel economy 8.5 l/100 km (87 miles, 46 mph, 27.7 MPG). There were about 30 km on a motorway and the remaining 110 km was driven on country roads.
Wrapping up
Overall, I really enjoyed my first ride in SPORT mode and have been enjoying the SPORT mode occasionally since on segments of the road, where it could be fully enjoyed. Until recently, I avoided using SPORT mode for most normal driving due to the fear of significantly reduced fuel economy. My long-term fuel economy average hovers around 5.8 l/100 km (41 MPG) so using SPORT mode can be quite noticeable, as you can see above.
However, during our recent trip to Italy, where I had to do some longer distances on German autobahn, I flipped the driving mode lever to SPORT to stiffen the steering wheel and improve accelerator response and drove in SPORT mode for couple of hundred kilometers. On that trip, we were a family of four and the car was loaded with luggage, but despite that, the trip fuel economy landed at 7.1 l/100 km (33.1 MPG), which was not any worse than other similar vacation trips I drove on COMFORT setting.
So, SPORT mode became my driving mode of choice on motorway, mainly because it improves steering control and does not affect the fuel economy at constant speeds. As a bonus, the SPORT mode only depletes the battery by 50% and keeps it at that level, which is great when getting off the motorway and driving the final few miles in the city in EV mode. COMFORT mode depletes the batter all the way to 10% and ECO PRO even lower to around 5% of capacity, which is not enough remaining capacity for continuous EV mode usage.
What next?
In future installments of this series, I plan to share my experience with assisted driving and driving autonomy of BMW Active Tourer as well as BMW ID6 infotainment and built-in navigation. Eventually, I would like to wrap up the series with long-term fuel economy and electricity usage costs.
Disclosure: The title of this issue was inspired by an old Honda Civic ad, which I am not linking here, since it is …controversial.