Quote:
Originally Posted by champignon
I have a 155 mile drive I do frequently, between my primary residence in the mountains, and a house in the city that I share with my business partner. The drive is predominantly on 2 lane undivided highway, with about 1/4 of it on the freeway. We have lots of speed enforcement and sneaky cops who hide in places you can't see until you are right upon them. Generally, you can go 5 mph over the limit without getting cited, but much more than that is risky.
There are curvy and interesting parts of the drive, however much of it is flat and uninteresting. There aren't good places to hide for the cops in the curvy parts of the drive, so I take that into consideration.
Were I to speed a lot, I might save 10 minutes on the drive (out of 2.5 hours) which isn't worth getting a lot of tickets. So I go 5 over, however when I pass I really let it go :-) I also like to downshift and go fast in the curves with the first level of traction control turned off, in sport+ mode.
But in the long boring parts of the drive, I put it in cruise control set at 5 mph over the speed limit; this is actually at 7 or 8 mph over the limit on the speedometer, because BMW, in their infinite wisdom, exaggerates the speed on the speedo vs. the real speed you can observe using gps on either a Garmin or an app on your smartphone. I put it in cruise control when I do to avoid wavering in speed and risking a ticket because maybe I was going 72 in the 65 mph zone; not worth it when the driving is really boring.
Fuel economy is not a major concern to me; with the amount of driving I do, and the fact that I am not wasteful or excessive in my driving style, I will save $25/year in fuel cost by trying to drive economically, which is not worth it to me.
Long answer to a short question :-)
Generally I have gotten away with this strategy.
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From what you're describing, the car is working exactly as it should.
You put it in Sport+ before the curvy stretches. You enjoy it.
When you reach the boring stretches, you turn cruise on, and the car drops to Sport. Just a tad less aggressive than Sport+. The biggest difference is that DSC is turned on. But you don't notice it, because you're on cruise and on a boring stretch.
I agree it's still not the same as the hydraulic steering of older Bimmers. But the entire industry has moved to electric. Even Porsche.