How to save fuel by driving efficiently
It’s important to be more efficient on the road, given increasing fuel prices and the environmental cost of excess emissions. You can improve your fuel efficiency and mileage by making some simple changes to your driving habits, which in turn help to lower maintenance and refueling costs, while making you a safer driver. Driving more efficiently doesn’t mean that you have to be extremely cautious or slow with your car, but does mean making small adjustments that’ll add up to long term savings. These methods include:
Don’t Over Accelerate
Avoid over accelerating, as this tends to burn up a lot more fuel than driving at a normal rate. This is particularly important when pulling out from traffic and hitting corners.
Switch Your Engine Off in Traffic
If you’re sitting in traffic for 5 minutes, switch off your engine to avoid wasting fuel. Doing this on a regular basis will gradually add up to a lot of saved fuel and costs.
Observe Speed Limits
While this may seem like an obvious choice, driving faster for no reason will end up with you burning through a lot more fuel than you would by sticking to the most efficient speed for a particular road.
Cut Down on Weight
Remove heavy towbars, bike racks and roof racks when they’re not actually being used, as they create more aerodynamic drag and force engines to work harder. Decluttering the back of a vehicle can also help with this process, so be ruthless about what you have in your boot.
Don’t Overuse Air Conditioning
Use your air conditioning sparingly, and try to make use of your windows on a warm day. Similarly, avoid using your air conditioning for very short drives. Extensive use of air conditioning makes your car’s engine work much harder.
Cruise Control
Maintaining a constant speed will make your engine more efficient in terms of speed and fuel burning. Setting up cruise control on your car will make it easier to achieve this.
Overdrive
Make use of an overdrive setting on automatic transmissions, as these tend to make an efficient use of fuel. For manual transmissions, try to focus on gentler shifting to cut down on engine strain.
Make Use of Apps
Smartphone apps can be used alongside basic GPS navigation to monitor speeds, and can alert you to when you’re going too fast.
Protect Tyres
Ensure that your tyres are kept at the right tread, and that they don’t have any significant wear and tear, as this can add up to more serious problems in terms of putting too much pressure on a car’s engine.
Switch to a Hybrid
This may be a more radical move in terms of your driving, but hybrid cars that use a petrol engine and an electric motor are much more fuel efficient. Vehicles like the Toyota Prius also cut down on emissions, without sacrificing power or speed. A plug in electric car can also help with this approach, and will completely remove emissions, while giving you a much greater overall mileage.
Author Bio: Liam Ohm writes about the latest news in the automotive industry. used cars for sale in Basingstoke to the latest car gadgets available worldwide – he writes about it.
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