how did this stay under the radar for so long?
Hi Guys,
I've known about this change for some years, but have never thought to mention it because I didn't consider it to be especially useful.
Personally, I don't like fuel efficiency displays because I become obsessed with them. This is unquestionably a fault of mine and not of this feature! If you give me a car with a fuel efficiency display, I immediately start playing the game of 'how little fuel can I use?'. I don't want that in my A2, because I love driving the car. So, even though I have retrofitted DIS and Colour DIS to hundreds of A2s across Europe, I just have the basic cluster in my own car. It allows me to drive with a freedom that my brain won't otherwise allow.
From my experimentation, my conclusions are as follows...
- When you first switch on the ignition, the display shows the average fuel consumption. What I don't know is whether this average is for the last 1000 miles, or the last 100,000 miles or since the car was new. At the time of writing, my TDI has done 232,000 miles and shows 74.0 miles per imperial gallon. I have not yet found a way to reset this, either with the black stalks that pop through the fascia of the cluster or with VCDS. I also know of no way to connect the DIS controls to a non-DIS cluster; the electrical contacts don't exist. The result of this is that, if you have to change your cluster (due to electrical failure of some variety), you inherit the fuel economy figures from another vehicle (unless you take out a second mortgage and buy a new cluster from Audi).
- When the car starts moving, you see instantaneous fuel efficiency, with a calculation delay of approximately 1 or 2 seconds.
- It does not appear to be suitable for the AUA and BBY engines due to the behaviour of the EPC light. Of course, if you don't care about the EPC light, it works, but in the UK this may create problems with the MOT. I have not yet tested it on the 1.6 FSI cluster, but I expect to see the same problems with the EPC light. By enabling this on a petrol cluster, you're effectively entering conflicting coding, so it's hardly surprising that something goes wrong.
Whilst it is cool that the basic cluster can do this, I regretfully confess that I find it a bit pointless. After 232,000 miles, the average fuel efficiency displayed when I start the car never changes. Maybe after driving another 100,000 miles I will see a 0.1mpg increase? When I start driving, I see instantaneous fuel efficiency. If I'm driving uphill or accelerating, I get a disappointing figure. If I'm driving downhill or decelerating, I get an excellent figure. That's it. So, in my own car, I keep it switched off and have never added it to my array of A2 upgrade services because I consider it to be a novelty with little meaning. Of course, as long as you've got a TDI, I'm happy to switch it on for anyone.
Kind regards to all,
Tom