Economical Driving

[Toker]

there are lots of simple, common sense ways to improve mpg, the main things I do are feathering the throttle, decelerating in 5th rather than coasting (no fuel used while decelerating but fuel is pumped in to keep the engine turning over when coasting), NEVER labouring the engine (when warming your engine up, labouring it is just as bad, if not worse, than booting it up to high revs). Also at junctions or joining traffic etc learn to judge your speed well enough to drive up and decelerate to the junction or to the point you join the traffic, instead of using unecessary fuel accelerating up then braking (not everyone can judge this accurately so give it a try and see, I only touch my brakes if totally necessary, to me braking at corners, joining traffic etc is like failing in life).

don't drive with your window open at high speeds, the drag caused is just as bad, if not worse, than using air conditioning.

Also keep your tyres pumped up, make sure your cars well serviced and maintained - poorly maintained cars do suffer poor mpg.

Another rule is if your going to be sitting stationary idling (say your parked outside someones house waiting for them to come out) if it's going to be over say a minute, turn your engine off as it will use more fuel than is injected to start the engine again.

I also put redex through my engine every 6 months are so for good measure

 

[clv101]

Driving economically makes a big difference in my experience, around 20% from mid 50s mpg to mid 60s mpg on a long run (Fabia VRS). So I’m of the opinion that most people could cut their fuel bills by 20% if they drove better. That I still see people bombing down the motorway 90mph and racing away from the lights tells be that either people are just dumb, or they don’t care as much about fuel prices the tabloids report.

 

[Goliath]

Those figures are with V Power. With normal cheap unleaded my last calculated average was 24mpg with normal driving and 29mpg on a run, so quite a staggering difference.

Glad it's not just me. I usually get about 300 mile out of a tank of V-power, the occasions I've had to use BP ultimate that's gone down to about 260 - Seems it's worth the extra (doesn't stop me wincing every time i have to fill up though)

 

[DannyW]

I do a mixture of town and Motorway/A road driving.

£20 gets me on average around 120 miles which works out around 28MPG off the top of my head. A bit naff really for a 1.6 Petrol.

yup thats poor, its about exactly the same as i get to £20

fuel light bingo is such a fun game tbh, even better doing it in company cars/vans aswell

 

[Dolph]

With the S3, the fuel consumption varies a lot depending on acceleration, not speed (until you start approaching 3 figures when it starts to drop). I don't see much real difference (maybe 1-2mpg) between 40mph and 80mph provided the acceleration to get their isn't dramatically different. Hard acceleration causes the consumption to plummet to something absolutely horrific though, and stop start town driving causes a trail of dead whales.

In the micra, the consumption gets steadily worse the faster you go, but as it's a town car and a runabout, it really doesn't matter.

 

[mehuk]

yeah i try to be economical on my drives and the old petrol computer seems to enjoy it more

i saw somewhere that staying in and under 3000 rpm helps economy too.....

 

[Joe T]

As an experiment yesterday, I sat on the M1 for 20+ miles tucked in close behind an artic doing 55mph. I think I averaged close to 70mpg - not bad for a 3 litre diesel!

 

[R@tman]

Interesting stuff mate, I frequently decide to be as feather footed as I can in the truck (when I've not got 3 hours to do a 4 hour trip mind you) and can often get well into double figure MPG, not bad when my average is usually around 8 MPG.

been wanting to ask you for ages

what MPG hit do you take when you have a trailer on the back compared to just the tractor unit ?

 

[therealnerd2]

As an experiment yesterday, I sat on the M1 for 20+ miles tucked in close behind an artic doing 55mph. I think I averaged close to 70mpg - not bad for a 3 litre diesel!

On a side note - does this **** artics off at all?

 

[Clarkey]

The fuel saving between dawdling and hooning in mine is only about 30 or so miles per tank, so I'd rather keep hooning it.

 

[fonzee]

same, can still hoon mine about and get 480 easy out of a tank. even with aircon on half the time.

 

[Lashout_UK]

My economy is greater at 70 than it is at 60. So guess which I'm more likely to cruise at ........

 

[fonzee]

think i may push for 600 on my next fill up.

ill be fine some days, just cruising, no hard acceleration etc... then i see someone i can play with, and it all goes downhill

 

[Jez]

Driving economically makes a big difference in my experience, around 20% from mid 50s mpg to mid 60s mpg on a long run (Fabia VRS). So I’m of the opinion that most people could cut their fuel bills by 20% if they drove better. That I still see people bombing down the motorway 90mph and racing away from the lights tells be that either people are just dumb, or they don’t care as much about fuel prices the tabloids report.

Probably fuel card drivers, i do the same. I'd imagine that a hell of a lot of the traffic on the roads are not actually footing the fuel themselves.

 

[clv101]

Probably fuel card drivers, i do the same. I'd imagine that a hell of a lot of the traffic on the roads are not actually footing the fuel themselves.

That would be an interesting statistic. How many drivers on the road aren't directly paying for their fuel personally?

In 2001 there were 1.6 million company cars, in 2005 there were 1.2 million. I bet there are only around 1 million company cars on the road today, link. Only a fraction of company car drivers get the fuel paid for them, say half, which leave us with half a million. I bet fuel carded company cars do on average twice the average annual mileage though so effectively we can say there is a million of them on the road. There are ~23 million cars in the country so just over 4%.

There will also be some personal car drivers with fuel cards or claiming back their fuel. I think this is a smaller number than the company car drivers though. My estimate is around 5% of the cars we see on the roads are driven by people not paying for the fuel.

 

[scratch]

With the S3, the fuel consumption varies a lot depending on acceleration, not speed (until you start approaching 3 figures when it starts to drop). I don't see much real difference (maybe 1-2mpg) between 40mph and 80mph provided the acceleration to get their isn't dramatically different. Hard acceleration causes the consumption to plummet to something absolutely horrific though, and stop start town driving causes a trail of dead whales.

I find the same thing with mine. As long as I'm above something like 30mph I can cruise at any speed (up to around 80) and the fuel economy will be pretty much the same. The key is holding that speed. There seems to be a point on the accellerator where the car will hold it's speed and get good MPG. Let off slightly and the car slows down, push it slightly harder and it uses more fuel.

I've recorded a 40mpg run in mine, but am averaging 32 at the moment. That's with 90% sensible motorway driving and the odd blast here and there

 

[Jez]

That would be an interesting statistic. How many drivers on the road aren't directly paying for their fuel personally?

In 2001 there were 1.6 million company cars, in 2005 there were 1.2 million. I bet there are only around 1 million company cars on the road today, link. Only a fraction of company car drivers get the fuel paid for them, say half, which leave us with half a million. I bet fuel carded company cars do on average twice the average annual mileage though so effectively we can say there is a million of them on the road. There are ~23 million cars in the country so just over 4%.

There will also be some personal car drivers with fuel cards or claiming back their fuel. I think this is a smaller number than the company car drivers though. My estimate is around 5% of the cars we see on the roads are driven by people not paying for the fuel.

We have vans and all sorts of commercials on top, but i am still very suprised its that low.

 

[Simon]

Believe it or not, no, not at all! - Given that fuel is probably the biggest outlay (including the trucks themselves!) of any haulage / transport operation you'd have thought that fuel effieciecy would be top priority, it seems near the bottom tbh.

The main incentive to getting back quickly is that the company saves a bit of wages as I am paid by the hour, I usually just want to get home before I run out of driving and / or duty time.

This may change as I was reading that Fuel is now the biggest cost of a Haulage company. Previously it was driver's wages

 

[excaliborg]

A lot of my miles are on the motorway, usually i'll boot at every occasion possible but by just feathering the throttle (pressing the pedal no more than half an inch) over a 120 mile trip I find I save around a fiver.

 

[Rosbif]

I find that doing 70 instead of 80-85 saves me about 8 MPG in my Fiesta on motorway runs. To be honest I'd rather just do 70 and save the money and hassle of having to fill up more often as opposed to 15 or 25 minutes in journey time. It doesn't seem to matter whether I rag it around town or drive like grandad, it still returns about the same, and on this last tank appears to return even less than usual. 180 miles out of ~21 litres (half tank) is highly disappointing. Might have to check the tyre pressure.

If anything I reckon I need a bigger car since these motorway runs in a Fiesta are inefficient. 45MPG at 70MPH appears pretty poor to me, mind you, it is a 1.1 She wasn't designed and built for this kind of work.