Winter Driving

[wingku]

Quick question, Do you guys find the extreme cold weather for the past few weeks greatly affect the gas mileage in your mini?

[Ferroequine]

Yes, I have found that whenever it gets cold, fuel mileage goes down. I attribute this to the car having to adjust its air/fuel mixture to deal with the cold ambient air temps, as well as increased warm up times; the car will run a lot richer when it is cold (anyone remember a manual choke?). Of course idling to warm up the car does nothing to save fuel either.

The upside to this cold air is that the Cooper S owners enjoy increased performance due to all that nice cold charge air going into the supercharger / turbo, and and also having nice cold air flowing across the intercooler.

[heli_guy]

Yep, me too. Cold whether means poorer mileage. I also think part of it is the traffic too. Whenever it is cold, we seem to spend more time in bad traffic.

[faster,Tobias!]

And don't forget wheel spin due to snow and ice. I suspect that would be the biggest cause of decreased efficiency. Or the additional 50 LBs of weight the car gains from the slush build up in the wheel wells.