Hi all,

I have just got a new '13plate Cmax (ecoboost).

I just wondered how long it takes roughly for the ECU to recognise your drivng style and provide a fairly accurate MPG reading?

Cheers

realistically you would be looking at up to 500 miles before it really starts to get a grip, but your looking at around 3 - 5 thousand miles before the engine bed's in and that combined with the knowledge of your driving would be how long before you really see the car adjust to you

Hi Jeebow,

Many thanks for that.

So how does the ecu actually adapt to the type of driver?

How clever are these things?

Basically it monitors your TPS to see how heavy footed you are, the heavier the foot, the more fuel it dumps in, but it monitors that along with gear changes to see what sort of driver you are (rally, economical etc). It basically fine tunes its responses to match your TPS averages, along with various other sensors, so it builds up an average picture of you as a driver. It then uses these average numbers over the long term to figure out the best fuel delivery rate, pressure, etc

Dont get me wrong, its not exactly artificial intelligence, but like any computer, you can customize its settings and it uses what you set to determine how it behaves when you use it. So as you set the values, it proceeds to use these as the basis for the rest of its calculations.