REDUCE GAS COSTS, HOW TO LOWER GAS CONSUMPTION WHEN DRIVING

Reduce gas costs, how to lower gas consumption when driving because cutting your petrol consumption will reduce the cost of fuel you use in your car

As well as changing the way you drive, there are other ways to make your car as economical as possible and reduce the cost of the gas you use.

Start of article about how to reduce fuel costs.

Previous page about how to reduce petrol consumption.

Check the tyres

If your tyres are below the recommended pressures, your car will suffer from increased drag and so will use more fuel. Check them regularly to reduce gas costs.

Remove the roof rack

A roof rack or a bike rack will also increase drag, so removing them when not needed will help you save petrol and cut your fuel costs.

Switch off the air conditioning

When you have the air con on in your car, the engine has extra work to do because it has to drive the air conditioning compressor and it therefore has to use more fuel. By switching off the air conditioning in your car you can cut the amount of fuel used on your journey and so save money and petrol.

Close the windows

Hopefully you like a warm car because once you have switched off the air con you really should try to avoid opening the windows or sunroof too. Open windows increase drag and so reduce your miles per gallon.

Shed excess weight

Have a look in your boot. Are you carrying around things you don't need such as tool kits, boxes of papers, golf clubs, or anything else which you keep in the car because you keep forgetting to take it into the house or because you think it might come in handy one day? if so, take it out because it will probably be having an impact on your fuel economy. You can cut your motoring costs just by being sensible.

If you're trying out hypermiling or doing anything else to try to increase your MPG figure, then you are going to want to be able to measure your fuel consumption as accurately as possible so as you can get a reliable picture of whether your efforts are doing anything to reduce the amount of fuel you use.

A lot of today's cars feature some form of onboard computer which will tell you what your fuel consumption is. These devices usually give other information such as average speed, journey time, etc. if your car does not have this as standard, you can buy separate devices such as a ScanGuage which you can fit to your car yourself to easily monitor your fuel consumption figures.

If you do not have any kind of MPG readout, you can get a pretty good idea of what your fuel consumption is as follows. Fill your petrol tank until the fuel pump cuts out for the first time. This should mean your tank is full, but not so full that you are going to waste fuel (see below). Set your trip meter to zero and then drive until the tank is almost empty. Refill it exactly as before and note how many miles you have driven and how many litres of fuel you have put in. Multiply the amount of fuel in litres by 0.22 to get the amount in gallons (note this is UK gallons - the sums will be different for US gallons). Now divide the number of miles traveled by the number of gallons and this will give you your MPG figure and hopefully reduce gas consumption.

The best way to reduce gas costs is to drive slower and learn how to lower gas consumption when driving your car because cutting your petrol consumption will reduce the cost of fuel you use in your vehicle