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Originally Posted by jdong
I live in the Bay Area and a lot of times it's like that too. I've already noticed this car makes me much less grumpy about traffic jams. In case of standstill traffic, I just put it into Eco Pro mode and smugly look at my trip computer say "28mpg" while finding a better radio station. It's a lot less unnerving when you don't have to see your fuel economy for your whole trip drop from high-20's to low-10's when hitting a jam.
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Yes! That is my exact experience. Sometimes I have to wait through 2 cycles of a long traffic light. That's 5 minutes of pure idling... just wasting gas for no reason. I know all F30s have A.S.S. but with the AH3 it doesn't seem like any chance the N55 will even fire up, especially if you're just creeping along.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdong
I test drove the GS450h and M35h and I can totally see why there's hybrid discrimination. There is really not another hybrid on the market that feels this smoothly integrated. The perception of speed is very noticeable on this car, especially in sport mode when it eBOOSTS all the time. Even though the N55 is a very low lag turbocharged engine, there still is like a 1 to 2 second period for the power to build up when you suddenly WOT while cruising. The motor does a great job of giving you a temporary boost to mask that. I don't think that it'll beat a 335i on a racetrack, but that doesn't matter to me. It's the perception of power.
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Even though I owned an M3, I didn't track it. I love spirited driving, but I'm not concerned about .2 seconds 0-60mph or slalom time... I much prefer the extra
torque.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdong
And I'm glad to hear you got such a good deal on purchasing the AH3 as well. That's awesome! Yeah, back on my A4, I paid $1250 for a warranty-backed stage 1 ECU remap that claimed to be more "responsive" and "1mpg" better due to a leaner burn. That was more of a waste of money than the ActiveHybrid can ever be.
My #1 concern when considering a hybrid performance car is "what am I compromising?". And in the case of the AH3, you're really not giving up much over a 335i.
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Not only are you not giving up much, you're getting the new Nav, guaranteed better mpg, a few free extra options (if you spec correctly) and the fun of knowing you're driving a fairly rare auto. I would never pay $6500 more for those privileges, but $1-2K extra makes pretty good sense.