Agree 100%. I read the entire press release that was quoted above, and it seems very clear they are circling the wagons to prepare for the inevitable lawsuits. If they try to defend by claiming that mileage is not important to Mini owners, they will lose badly. All the Plaintiff's attorney needs to do is show all the ads they run claiming the great mileage. Those ads clearly demonstrate that BMW knows that one of the major reasons people buy Minis is because of the claimed mileage. Not good PR for us Mini owners.

 

And this is one of the things I hate about this country.

This mistake is costing owners $92 per year with 10,000 miles of driving.

MINI sold just under 16,000 hardtops YTD in 2013. Let's be generous and say that's how many F56 owners are impacted.
Source:
http://www.motoringfile.com/2014/08/01/mini-usa-july-sales-the-f56-picks-up-steam/

That's a grand total of at most $1,600,000 , possibly for a few years running. Although the reality is that MINI would probably offer owners free detailing or similar.

But instead some lawyers are going to file a class action lawsuit regardless of what MINI does. MINI will have to hire their own layers. MINI ends up paying more than they should, the lawyers get the bulk of the money to cover "expenses" and "services rendered", and the owners will get bupkis.

 

Well stated Shark.
They were operating on the edge, squeezing as many MPGs as possible.
That's to be expected.
The EPA just differed in terms of which side of the edge they were on.
Operating the evaluations in Green mode rather than default mode seemed to be the wrong side as far as EPA was concerned.

 

So the difference is merely because BMW ran the tests in Green Mode?

 

If that's true, at least they have a leg to stand on legally, unless EPA regulations prohibit them from doing that. I also strongly disagree with the claim that someone made that BMW is being of accused of lying. That is really inappropriate. I have seen no evidence of that, certainly not on this forum.

 

intentional overstating = lying. Semantics not worth arguing over.

Read the EPA FAQ I previously linked. The test measurements are lowered by an average of 10% and vary model to model depending on estimates of untested factors such as aerodynamic drag, road resistance, etc. The issue with the MINI was differing road resistance estimates.

The EPA estimates began unraveling when Ford used the Fusion test results for the C-Max as allowed by EPA procedure when models have the same drivetrain and vehichle weight. Common platforms and shared drivetrains are the rule these days.

The manufacturers are legally prohibited from advertising any MPG figures except for those produced by the EPA procedure which includes developing engineering estimates for the untested factors before the cars are sold have much real world experience. The published MPG estimates are in fact numbers produced by a mathematical engineering model in a computer. MINI is not engaging in legal speak.

From the EPA press release:
" The Mini Cooper 3-door was found to have road-loads (i.e. aerodynamic drag, tire rolling resistance, and driveline friction) which exceeded EPA audit criteria when compared to the values originally reported by BMW at the time of certification."

 

Lol I'd love to get 1,500,000 fill ups out if my mini! Over 680,000,000 miles out of one car, I wouldn't complain about a 4 mpg difference!

 

yeah I somehow made it out to be way more complicated than it needed to be

 

Now, do the math again if gas prices rises to $x.xx/gal.

 

speaking of:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-f...omy-1415028646

 

I did!

Ans for some fun too.

Now over 7000+ miles on my 2014 MCS A/T and the average MPG has been steady 36.7-36.8

 

Its a joke that Mini can't use the green mode as part of the EPA mpg equation. My mpg's on my new MCS Auto are in line with the 14's original rating.My car is incredibly efficient when cruising in green mode.

 

I read this from this post on the web. He said cars.com talked with a guy from EPA, but I couldn't find the source. Anyways here it is:
-If a car has various modes but defaults back to Normal whenever you turn the engine back on, the EPA draws its ratings from the Normal mode.
-But vehicles that default to a fuel-saving mode at start-up — like the2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee — set economy as the "predominant" mode from which the EPA bases its ratings, the agency told us.
-If a car has multimode system that stays in whatever you last drove, the EPA may not be able to establish a "predominant" mode. In such cases, "the vehicle is tested in the various modes and the fuel economy results from the best and worst modes are harmonically averaged," EPA officials wrote. "For example, if a vehicle has a sport mode, normal mode, and economy mode, the fuel economy results of the sport and economy modes would be averaged."

So defaulting to the last used mode won't help with EPA estimated MPG. The only way to raise the EPA estimated MPG figures are to make the car default it to Green Mode, which many people might hate. Regardless of what's on the MPG sticker, I would wan't it to remember the last used mode but maybe that will even lower the MPG tag even more than how it is now.


Oh, and another thing I read some time ago was that 4 door Hardtops are sharing the same MPG sticker as 2 door Hardtops, and that's why the 2015 2 door Hardtop ratings dropped more from the 2014. So even though the 4 door get worse MPG in real life, maybe BMW decided it's still a better value to advertise it as getting higher MPG even at though the 2 door Hardtop will show a lower than real MPG. I don't know if this is true though.

 

You also have to look at the way the Actual EPA Test is done that establishes the Estimated Fuel Mileage rating.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fe_test_schedules.shtml

The big thing to take away from this is it is contrived in the Laboratory not on the road.

Motor on!

 

What it clearly states is that the Predicted Reliability rating is based on surveys received by owners of vehicles that are three years old. They also state that the Predicted Reliability ratings for 2014 are based on 2011 model vehicles, which for the MINI Cooper Hardtop means R56 models, not F56.

Predicted Reliability ratings for F56 models would conceivably show up around 2017.

 

Yes, the test is contrived, but don't fool yourself into thinking this was an honest mistake. Some companies are consistently honest and accurate, some have been caught exaggerating. It's fairly clear.

If you keep it for a long time (and a lot of people are doing that these days) over the life of the vehicle the MCS is going to easily cost you over $1000 more than it was described. You have a right to say you personally don't care, but that's not an insignificant amount.

 

All of this came about right after I order my F56. Does anyone think it would be reasonable to ask that they discount the price of the car for this when I take delivery of it in a few weeks? We were specifically told that the EPA ratings were done in Mid mode which is clearly not true. I justified getting a car that takes premium gas by reasoning that my last car got 32 MPG (mixed city and hwy driving) and the mini should get better gas mileage, which would make up for the difference in cost. However, that may not be true given all this new information. If you think a discount would be appropriate, how much would be fair?

 

So looking at other automakers...
Namely Ford and KIA/Hyundai, they had similar mpg downgrades...
Owners got checks....gift cards in the mail...$$ varried by the restatement % by model...
And the fines to the manufactures took a while, but KIA/Hyundai just got their $$$ stated...about $350,000,000 total.....about $100,000,000 in civil fines, $50,000,000 to establish an indepent group to test mpg, and $200,000,000 in losses of pollution credits... http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/201...s/#more-941265 Ford is still pending I believe...
MINI volumes are lower, but misstatements of mpg ARE a big issue regulatory wise...

 

One thought...
Folks who TOOK DELIVERY BEFORE the restatement might get a rebate....
But since folks who took delivery of the cars with restated mpg figures had the "right of first refusal" meaning they could walk away from the deal, I doubt will get $$ back.....

 

I agree with your observation. When I ordered my F56 2015 model, the gas mileage was hidden with a *TBD on it, so technically, I probably have no ground claiming rebates or something.
However, knowing that 2014 is mechanically the same, I relied on the then-inflated EPA numbers from 2014 models. So I do feel betrayed.

 

I feel betrayed, violated even. I'm gonna get my money back and get an all electric Smart Sled. Oh wait, I don't have an F56.

 

I am on my second tank. First tank 33.4mpg 40% town, 75mph highway.
Current tank 38.8mpg 10% town, 75mph highway.
My mileage has matched the old ratings and if I drove 65mph on the highway, I am sure I could get 40.
I think that the new EPA ratings are bogus.

 

The computer in mine has been showing right around 36mpg which I have compared against calculated values and it is very accurate. Before I got my manual '15 MCS I highly doubted that I would see the numbers that the '14 owners were getting or anywhere near the city mpg. I live in Pittsburgh so there are lots of hills to eat up your mpg.
My WORST tanks were still over 30mpg and that was a ton of city driving with very few miles on the car.

I hope that people will actually drive their cars to see what kind of mileage they get before going asking for a refund.

 

This thread continues to entertain.

 

Let's not mix two different things. This is not a matter of what MPG average you or I will actually observe. The problem we are talking about is the over-estimated EPA sticker, which is used to compare when cross-shopping. Knowingly testing MPG figures in Green mode doesn't look like they did it by accident.