Hacking Your Mileage
With the price of petrol on the rise soon, it’s best we change our driving habits to gain more mileage (kiloage?). I doubt there’s anyone in Malaysia owns a Hybrid. So here’s a few general techniques to be gain more while spending less.
Car Maintenance
One of the best ways to optimise mileage is to keep up with vehicle maintenance. Key parameters to maintain are tire pressure, tire balance, and proper oil weight and level. So if you’re thinking about skipping maintenance to shave off your spending on your car, think again.
Driving and Elevation
Avoid using cruise control while climbing hills. The cruise control will accelerate the car the moment it loses speed, therefore using more petrol. Also, rather than maintaining a precise speed while going up to a bridge or hill by adding more acceleration, maintain a steadily throttle position and allow your car to gradually slow down during climbing. Then let gravity to bring the car back up to speed.
Doing so will keep the engine in a more efficient RPM on the climb, and reduce energy wasted braking on the descent at the same average speed. However, avoid slowing down too much on a climb.
For example, lets assume your optimal RPM is 2k. While climbing your RPM drops nearly to 1k, shift a gear down. If you’re using an auto transmission, then your car will automatically down shifts for you.
Speed and Acceleration
Having a steady and efficient also help keeping your mileage up. Avoid a sudden fast starts and keeping your speed down also helps, but who wants to drive at 20 kmph on a highway? So keeping it at optimal is good enough. When accelerating, the engine should also be kept in the peak of the torque curve. Slow acceleration is also less efficient.
Air Conditioning/Cooling
Air Conditioning uses a few horsepower and will have an impact on mileage. Cycling the AC on and off at certain point of your journey can also make a difference to your milage.
Turning the AC off when climbing hill, running it at moderate temperature while driving on a flat road, and running it at maximum when descending a hill. This may help reducing your petrol usage while driving.
Taken from Wikicars.org
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thank God ur not blogging bout savin fuel thru FFI. haha
March 8th, 2007 at 7:00 pmAnd maintain proper tyre air pressure too
March 8th, 2007 at 7:31 pmmaintain good attitute while driving can save fuel too! dont become road rage and speed demon!
March 8th, 2007 at 7:33 pmAlex: I could, if i read everything.
AK: yeah, i left that out.
Jiunjie: aiya, my mom also maintain good driving attitude all the time, but she dare not change to the 5th gear every time she drives. so no use oso.
anyways, sometimes i just wanna feel the adrenaline of accelerating.. so i don’t mind spending a few bucks once in a while..
March 9th, 2007 at 12:09 amWhen driving on a hilly area, accelerate when going downhill so that you get more speed and momentum going into the next uphill section (and you no need to accelerate that much on the uphill section…and thus use less fuel). Not recommended though for twisty roads.
March 11th, 2007 at 10:00 amWith the continuous rising of gas prices nowadays, we think of ways how to save fuel mileage. Proper car care and maintenance do help in saving fuel mileage. Cars and its parts like mercedes brakes should be checked. Proper driving also helps. With those basic tips, we can save fuel and at the same time able to maintain our car and ensures of its performance.
April 4th, 2007 at 12:27 pm