Running a Car On a Tight Budget – More Fuel Saving Tips
The price of petrol and diesel has been the subject of many a discussion at which we usually place all the blame at the feet of the oil companies and the government of the day. Fair or unfair, the question remains: what can I do to keep my fuel bills and carbon emissions down? There sometimes seems to be very little we can do to bring down our fuel costs – or is there?
We may not be able to sway the opinions of powerful heads of state and the fuel companies probably aren’t going to budge but we can take steps to ensure that we do make the most of our fuel when we’ve purchased it. Here aresome of Carmax Finance’s top tips on fuel efficiency:
Stick to the speed limit
Quite apart from the safety aspects of doing so, observing the speed limits can also save you quite a bit of money. Most vehicles, Ferrari owners stop reading now, begin to lose fuel efficiency once they exceed fifty miles per hour or thereabouts, and the drop off can be quite dramatic. Obviously this varies according to the engine size and the design of the vehicle, so check the fuel efficiency figures from your car’s manufacturer to find out the most effective cruising speed for your particular make and model.
Some estimates place the potential saving at around 15p per gallon for every 5 miles per hour above fifty that you travel, based on your average speed, so it’s easy to see how that would add up to a sizeable amount on a long trip or over a period of time on normal trips.
Don’t allow your engine to be idle
No one or nothing should be idle, we all know that kind of behaviour is despicable but, when it is used in the context of your car’s engine, it is also potentially very costly. Tests have shown that allowing your engine to idle, i.e. run at a tick-over rate for prolonged periods of time, can waste up to half a gallon of fuel per hour. If you are parked up or at a standstill in traffic, perhaps caught up in a hold up on the motorway, then it would pay you to turn your engine off and save, big time!
There is a popular myth that it costs more to turn an engine back on again than you save by switching it off when idle. Dismiss those who espouse those thoughts to you with a contemptuous comment and, perhaps, gesture. It just isn’t true, it actually costs only the equivalent of a couple of seconds worth of fuel to turn your engine off when stationery and then back on again when things begin to move and the savings from doing so are very real so it’s well worth doing.
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Category: Saving Money
