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My BMW 530d: Service update & interesting anecdotes from a Hyd roadtrip

12th May 2025, 18:30 by Deepankar Sadekar

The onward journey to Hyderabad was quick and comfortable, with nice roads throughout.

BHPian d3mon recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Just checking in - been 6 months since the last update. And about 2.5 years and ~19k KMs since I got Trie in my garage.

In all of my previous cars, the upgrade bug had bit me by this time. Big time.

But this time, there is no pang or desire to get anything better. Simply because as far as sedans go, Trie's as perfect as sedans can be (Disclaimer: For me). Would I like a Porsche 911 or a Cayman? Of course! But other than proper sports cars which I can't afford anyway, none of the other mainstream offerings in the market make me feel like I'm missing out on anything.

It's one thing to say this fresh after you get a new car. But it's completely different if you still feel the same after a couple of years, when you've really gotten to know the car really well.

I do not wish for:

More power
More Space
More Comfort
Better Handling
Better FE
More gadgets
Better quality
Better NVH
Better sound system
Better gearbox

I only sometimes wish for a better soundtrack from the exhaust, which is frankly impossible, this being a diesel. And a manual 'box. Which is only available in the Z4 & the M2 now.

Service updates:

Got the annual service done in December. Just standard stuff, nothing to report. Had gotten a call about the EGR recall for Trie, so I had planned to get this done at the same time as the service, but Kun BMW messed up and despite confirming that they had the part in stock, they told me that they had the wrong part and asked me to visit later .
On my second visit, they did replace the EGR and updated my inbuilt navigation maps from 2017 or 2018 all the way to 2024. Map update was a really slow process and it took more than an hour to first download from the server and then another hour for the car to copy over the 30 odd GB worth of maps onto the internal HDD.
Somehow ever since the EGR replacement, Trie's FE has gone up by at least 10%, both in the city and the highway, which is frankly very surprising. Performance remains the same.

Road trip to Hyderabad:

Recently went on a quick road trip to Hyderabad.

Before starting the trip, I had looked up the distance from BLR to HYD and seeing that it was ~570 km, I thought I'll fill up the tank before starting off, and then after driving around for a bit in Hyderabad, I'll probably need to refill on the way back at a clean Jio or a Shell station. That's because I usually don't get more than 900 km of real range from the tank. Made a mental note to bookmark one before starting back.

The onward journey was quick and comfortable, with nice roads throughout. Started at 6 AM and reached by 2:15, with a couple of breaks. Google predicted 9 hours, while we did it in just ~7hrs or so of driving time.

Now here's the surprising part. Despite Trie being in Sport mode throughout the journey and me making full use of the torque at every available opportunity, at the end of the journey, Trie reported that we'd done 572 km and the tank still had an unbelievable 656 km of range left!

This pillar was trying to fat shame Trie by calling it a big car.

Look how small and diminutive Trie actually is, next to a Creta!

Drove around in Hyd for a bit and the roads were amazing, especially when compared to the pathetic excuse of roads that we get in Bangalore.

Finally when I was starting off the return journey, after the internal city driving that brought down the predicted range, i was looking at 570 km to go again, with a tank range of under 500 km. Given that I was in no mood for any sort of range anxiety, nor to run the tank dry and make the fuel pump struggle, I once again thought - no way I'm getting back home on this tank.

But there was a seed of an idea forming in my head.

What if. Just what if I could get back home on the same tank which I'd started on? Surely that's not possible. I mean, 1200+ km on a single tank when I've already spent more than half the tank without trying to hypermile?

Anyway, I set some simple rules for myself for this challenge:

Fill up immediately if the range goes below 100 km
Abandon challenge early if the predicted range is not climbing and reaching at least +50-100 KM beyond my home.
Cruise at 100-120 kmph. No extreme hypermiling at 80/90 etc.

By the time I got out of Hyderabad city starting from Begumpet (averaging almost 60KMPH - almost unimaginable in BLR) the range had already started doing its magic. Slowly but surely, the kilometers to go kept coming down, while the range dropped less slowly, until they equalized completely. This happened within the first hour and a half of the drive itself.

Now it was becoming clear - maybe it was indeed possible.

So I soldiered on, and the suspension + steering in Sport mode kept me entertained enough, despite the much heavier traffic that I was encountering vs on the onward journey. Dynamically, the car is flawless. Epic comfort + tank like stability at any speed.

At a rest stop for lunch.

Pretty soon after, the range was showing a comfortable +70 km over the remaining delta. And this was maintained more or less throughout till the end of the journey. Just before I got off the final highway after crossing the magical 1200 km mark, Trie was still showing 100 km of range left!

Finally, I reached the same shell bunk where I'd refueled a few days prior to starting my journey, and felt like a Top gear presenter who had just managed to finish one of their fuel economy challenges

Final stats of the return journey. The higher time was more due to the traffic than my careful driving.