10 Tips to Improve Your Gas Mileage
How often do you have to stop and fill up your tank? Frequent trips to the gas station may be a sign that you’re not maximizing your car’s fuel efficiency. As it turns out, trading your ride in for a hybrid isn’t the only way to improve your gas mileage. Here are some simple pointers to get started.
Lighten your load. Take out your golf clubs, toolbox and other heavy items when you don’t need them. Any extra weight reduces your car’s fuel efficiency.
Use cruise control as much as possible because driving at a constant speed increases your gas mileage. Plus, it sure makes that daily commute a little more bearable.
Switch into overdrive to decrease the engine’s speed and save gas.
Keep the idling to a minimum. Instead, turn off the engine while you’re waiting for your pals to pick up something from the store or finish getting ready.
Gradually accelerate to waste less gas.
Maintain your tire pressure to ensure that your tires are always properly inflated. In addition to better gas mileage, it will help your tires last longer.
Use the grade of motor oil recommended by your car’s manufacturer, whether it be 5W-30, 5W-20 or 10W-30.
Give your engine a tune up on a regular basis.
Only turn on the air conditioning when you’re dripping sweat and threatened by heat stroke. Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get the idea. Use it sparingly.
Take off bike or luggage racks when you aren’t using them. They interfere with the aerodynamics of your vehicle and cause drag, which causes your car to expend more energy than necessary.
For more tips, visit Fuel Economy.
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21 Comments
June 18th, 2009 at 9:33 am
good ideas. And don’t forget about taking the bus or train. That helps, too.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:29 am
Good article. Also consider: use gravity when it will help you. In hilly cities you can go quite a ways with little gas by coasting in gear down hills. Also, don’t accelerate to stop lights or stop signs.
June 21st, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Public transport is the way to go but in the absence of that the above ideas are a good start – though I don’t think the one about cruise control is quite correct. It is true that maintaining a steady speed will save gas but cruise control actually is pretty bad if you are in hilly terrain – it will accelerate and brake a lot more since it tries to be very close to the set speed. You might save more gas without cruise control in hilly terrain.
Pramod
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:18 am
what in the wide world of sports does this mean?:
Fill up with the grade of motor oil recommended by your car’s manufacturer. Rising gas prices may tempt you to opt for unleaded, but that’s not always a wise choice when it comes to fuel efficiency.
“unleaded” motor oil?
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:24 am
“Fill up with the grade of motor oil recommended by your car’s manufacturer. Rising gas prices may tempt you to opt for unleaded, but that’s not always a wise choice when it comes to fuel efficiency.”
-what??? are you talking motor oil or petrol? all gas in the u.s. is UNLEADED!! so, again, what is this “tip” supposed to be???
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 am
The tip about turning on the A/C only when dripping sweat is flawed.
In fact, most vehicles are likely to get about the same gas mileage with the windows up and the A/C on as they are with the A/C off and all four windows down.
Just as bikes and luggage racks affect the aerodynamics, so does having the windows down. Effectively, the drag caused by having the windows down zeroes out any fuel efficiency that’s saved by keeping the A/C off — especially on the freeway when traveling at a higher rate of speed.
Just don’t do as my neighbor does: A/C on full blast WITH the windows down!
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:37 am
Where does your writer buy unleaded motor oil? In exchange I will sell them 5W-20 gasoline.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:41 am
on the highway you’ll get better mileage with air on and windows closed. with the windows closed the car has less resistance in the wind, hence, better mileage.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:57 am
You forgot the #1 way to save gas. SLOW DOWN! I agree also agree with Panrod, that if use cruise control up hills it will really suck the gas. Take it slow, especially up hills.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:01 am
Stop going to the drive up window. Park your car and place ypur order to go. Nine times out of ten you will get oyur food faster.
Jack
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:22 am
About running the air conditioning: I read that if you are going 40 mph or under, open your windows for ventilation. If you are going over 40 mph, use your air conditioning because having the windows closed at higher speeds reduces drag and increases your fuel efficiency.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:31 am
Leaded motor oil! When, where?
You missed a few points and were wrong on others.
When on the highway use your AC instead of opening the windows – open windows increase drag with a greater fuel impact than running the AC.
Keep your car clean — including the radiator and AC heat-exchanger and vents, dirt increases drag. Wax 2-3 times a year for even less drag (more abrades the paint.)
When approaching a stop, e.g., a traffic light, tailback, etc. try to slow down early and avoid coming to a complete stop, see if you can roll up to the light timing it to go green — this is because starting from stationary increases fuel consumption. Similarly in many cities the traffic lights are timed for a speed on major streets, like say 25mph — if you do that speed you will see mostly green lights and run at a smoother speed, reducing fuel consumption.
Jack-rabbit starts are pointless in most situations (maybe merging onto a fast highway is an exception) and they drink gas. Accelerate smoothly to your target speed.
In many cars, especially automatics, shifting to neutral while stopped at traffic lights rather than holding the car with the brake will lower your fuel consumption while reducing wear on brakes and gearbox — this is because you avoid making the brakes and engine/gearbox “fight” each other.
Buy a tire/tyre gauge and know how to use it — most gas station air-lines have wildly inaccurate gauges.
Learn how to inspect and change your own air-filter. It takes 2 minutes, but has a huge impact on gas consumption, especially in older cars. They can get very dirty between services, especially in high pollen seasons and summer — do it 3-4 times a year.
Practice calm driving — tests again and again have shown that frequent lane changing does not get you to your destination appreciably sooner.
Buy a really good sat-nav with live traffic updates and use it to avoid traffic jams.
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:41 am
The cruise control suggestion is not correct, except under very limited circumstances. If you live in an area that has any kind of hills, even small ones, cruise control will hurt your gas mileage. Cruise control lets the car slow down, then slams on the gas, and repeats this over and over. This is the worst possible driving technique for improving gas mileage. I don’t know why this suggestions keeps appearing in these lists on how to save gas, because it is a myth.
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:19 pm
this does not save fuel or mileage but it certainly helps the environment…
A typical car wash lasting 10 minutes uses approximately 100 gallons of water. What if we could conserve hundreds of gallons of water in one week. Go to a local car wash that uses recycled water or use an eco-friendly waterless car wash.
It takes only 15 minutes, is effective and uses no wate
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Also, I find that driving the speed limit is more effective than most of these steps. The prevailing traffic is usually at least 5 miles above and sometimes 15 miles above the speed limit. Keeping to the speed limit gives my car about 15% greater gas millage.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
It is a myth that using your AC significantly reduces gas mileage.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:37 pm
I road test vehicles for fuel efficiency, week after week. Conventional think – no matter how many times it is repeated (and this stuff is regurgitated on a daily basis without testing) – doesn’t always represent the facts.
For starters:
In the vast majority of vehicles we’ve tested, highway mileage is notably higher with cruise control OFF … but it takes an attentive driver to maintain this edge in efficiency.
The windows up/windows down, A/C on/off question depends on the specific vehicle. Some vehicles cut through the air at 65 MPH without a huge hit on aerodynamics …
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Turn off your A/C, but leave the fan running, a few minutes before you arrive at your destination. The air will still be cool, but the A/C unit is not going.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 pm
was about to post something about how wrong the cruise control thing is, but then saw that JeffH already did. So I’ll jut repeat what he said, bc it bears repeating.
The cruise control suggestion is not correct. Cruise control lets the car slow down, then slams on the gas, and repeats this over and over. This is the worst possible driving technique for improving gas mileage. I don’t know why this suggestions keeps appearing in these lists on how to save gas, because it is a myth.
June 28th, 2009 at 12:57 am
Here is an interesting article about the cost of gas:
http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1715
“America’s Irrational Petroleum Dependence”
“The electricity used to refine oil alone would power cars further than what’s in the rest of the barrel”
The only rational choice for a new car is electric.
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