kevtran

Hi all...My 2005 530i is my first BMW and I am wondering is it just me or is the speedometer off by 3 mph? I own an Escort Passport 9500i radar detector and everytime it goes off it shows the speed that I am driving and it always displays about 3 mph slower than I am actually driving. I also have a photo enforced speeding thing down the street from my house and its always off by 3 mph also. I have tested it by setting my cruise control to 70 and my radar detector goes off showing 67 mph. I was thinking my radar detector was defective, but its 100% on point with my other vehicles. Any suggestions? Looking on the bright side, its 3 mph slower and not faster.

DrLev99

It's not the radar equipment that's "off"...it's the BMW speedometer. Those speed traps along the highways here always show me doing about 3-4 mph slower than my speedo indicates. It's inherent to BMW's in general, and other cars. It's so you don't drive too fast..a trick to slow you down.

Do a search on this topic...has been discussed a lot. Congrats on your first bimmer!

artc

My car is a reliable 5 KMH slower than the speed reported by my portable Sat Nav! Seems fairly consistent! 5 kmh = 3.1 mph ......

Heloha

Do you have stock rims and original tire sizes installed?

GT Premi

What the other 2 guys said. BMW is notorious for inaccurate speedometers, along with Honda. I'm surprised it's only 3MPH, though. Used to be, it was 5 or more MPH optimistic.

monacobmw

This is a standard feature.

The question is whether the odometer is adjusted accordingly or whether all of us who lease our cars (with fixed mileage limits) are getting harmed by the bad speedometer setting.

porsche911targa

My apologies for reviving such an old thread. OK, I have just verified with two different GPS devices that my speedometer also reads 3 MPH faster across all speeds. This may not seem like much, but for someone who drives back roads 99% of the time with average speed of 25.2MPH, I calculated that the odometer should be off significantly , since the average speed shown in the computer should really be 22.2MPH. So 22.2/25.2 gives a correction factor of .89. .89x38,000 (current odo reading) = 33,820

In effect my car's real mileage is 33,280 and not the 38,000 miles indicated by the odometer. At this rate by the time the odo reads 100,000 (when CPO and extended maintenance expires) the real mileage should be 89,000 miles.

This is shocking to say the least. I would like to research if there is some sort of class action suit going on or if it would be worth starting one. The implication for such gross mileage misrepresentation is huge. For one thing, your warranty period expires much sooner than it should and it also affects the resale value. Has anybody dealt with BMW with this specific issue? If I were to request my dealer to calibrate the speedometer to pretty much negligible speed difference, will they do it under warranty?

Just as a side note. We tried the GPS on a friend's Camry and the speed was a perfect match.

TIA

luigi524td

I'm disappointed that many posters are reporting inaccurate speedometers.

I've confirmed my '07 e60 against two different Nav systems at a steady 40 mph and 60 mph and my speedometer is spot on. My car has original equipment Bridgestone tires and I estimate the tread depth is about 80% of new. Tire wear will have an (negligible) effect on speedometer ... and new vs totally worn out tires will result in speed variation.

I also think the speedometers on BMWs can be calibrated electronically ... if the speedo is off more than 2-3 mph it might be wise to have it validated / corrected.

pointerman

I have one of those mobile radar things that displays how fast you are going in my neighborhood right now and every time I drive by it (around 25 to 30) it indicates my speedo is displaying a speed of 2 MPH higher than the sign (digital readout in HUP).

DrLev99

All 3 of my E60's have been consistently 2-3 MPH slower than "actual" speeds. I drive by the same radar thing on the highway every night, and it's always showing 3mph or so slower than my speedo.

For comparison, I've driven my folks' Maximas past there quite a few times on the same radar unit, and it's dead on, so I know it's not the unit that's off.