Save Money on your Fuel bill (UK Petrol Prices)

Name: dbrierly

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Product:	UK Petrol Prices
Date:	16.05.08 (143 review reads)
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Advantages: save upto 25%

Disadvantages: None

SAVE MONEY ON FUEL!! The only way to make a real difference in what is pretty much an "inevitabe" rise in petrol and diesel costs, is to modify your driving style - which can make upto a 25% reduction to your fuel costs overall. Here are some tips to achieve this.
Remember - you cant influence the pump prices - but you CAN influence how much fuel you use (and pay for) without cutting down car usage.

1) on motorways, travelling at 80mph can use about 20-25% more fuel than driving at 65mph due to the extra wind resistance, combined with extra rolling resistance from the tyres . Also there is more internal friction in the engine by running faster at higher speeds - which just dumps its energy into the cooling system. Therefore more of your petrol is being used to overcome drag rather than drive you forwards.

2) Stopping an average vehicle from 60mph puts out enough energy to boil about 2 pints of water - that energy has come from the fuel you have just used to get it to 60MPH!! - therefore Plan ahead and coast to junctions more (either in neutral or with clutch down) rather than driving upto the junction and braking late. This will reduce the "throttle on time" and allow the mass of the vehicle to keep it going where it will slow down gently - eg Motorway slip roads etc. (Note coasting is great to a point - I don't mean hold up the traffic by crawling upto junctions at 5mph). Also if you brake heavily in a NON ABS car, braking in gear will prevent the wheels locking up....but you shouldn't be in this situation if driving with economy in mind (this was a good point raised by a reader in one of the comments)

3) Try to maintain a steady speed - the real fuel user is accelerating the mass of the vehicle to a higher speed...where you might get 10-15MPG (or less), whereas keeping a vehicle at a steady 65 you get 60MPG - giving an "average" of 40. Try to minimise the number of speed changes as this is where the fuel energy is mostly used . If you have a fuel computer with instant economy - watch the MPG go into single figures when you accelerate hard!! My friends jeep cherokee does 1 MPG!!! under full acceleration.

4) dont use your Air con unless you have to - AC puts extra loads on the engine which uses 10% more fuel approx. However DO use your AC maybe once a week for 10 mins otherwise the seals can degrade if it isnt used over a period of time.

5) De-clutter. Extra weight in the car uses extra fuel.

6) Check tyre pressures are correct - under inflated tyres are not only potentially dangerous, but they create more rolling resistance. can make 2-3 MPG improvement. Remember - overinflated tyres can also be dangerous!

7) Try to combine some of your short runs with other trips - cars use the most fuel in the first 10 mins as the engine warms up - so if you plan 2 short trips together, one of them will be with the engine at operating temperature which is much more efficient. My mondeo petrol does 18MPG for the first mile, 24 for the second, 28 for the third, 30 for the fourth etc - only after about 5 miles does it start to reach optimum efficiency. Combining some of your "round the houses" trips will make a significant difference.

8) keep it regularly serviced - clogged air filters etc make the engine run inefficiently and use more fuel. Use the "thinnest" viscosity oil that your manufacturer recommends - a 15W40oil is thicker than a 5w30 - the thinner oir will need less energy to be moved around within the engine and therefore less fuel for the engine to move it through the oil galleries etc. The thinner oils are more expensive, but can also be used for longer than cheaper oils before they require changing - you may notice a 1-2mpg improvement - maybe more in winter.
Over 10,000 miles with a car that does 35mpg - a 1.5mpg improvement with thinner oil adds up to a saving of 13 gallons - so thats 65quid in fuel savings. So that pays for the most expensive oil (eg MObil 1)and more!!. Note - you should not use thinner oil than your manufacturer reccomends, and diesels generally use thicker oil than petrol eg a 5W30 for petrol, 10W40 for diesel.

9) Dont drive along with the windows open - this causes extra drag and uses more fuel.

10) Think about lift sharing - even 1 day per week with a colleague saves you upto 20% in your commuting fuel costs!

11) if you are thinking of buying a car, diesel will give a fuel economy benefit of around 25% over petrol, despite being about 10 % more expensive - so works out about 15% cheaper overall. However - the values of new and second hand models can be higher for diesel due to its popularity - so if you dont do many miles but pay 500 quid more for the diesel car, it will take you a long time to reap the actual fuel saving. check the prices between models first. If they are the same, then you do get a genuine saving from day 1. For the more adventurous, LPG is now widely available and costs roughly half of petrol. Fuel consumption and performance when using LPG (it is switchable) is about 10% worse than petrol, so running costs are about 60% that of petrol. good second hand converted LPG cars are often hard to find though without looking for miles around. From my motor experience, avoid hybrids - they are expensive and the real world fuel economy is often drastically worse than the asdvertised figure - a normal diesel car is often much less to buy than a hybrid andgives better real world economy.

Summary: You can reduce your fuel bill - but not the price per litre