Save £800 a year on petrol...Guardian article.

tomstickland

This is an interesting and well researched article.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/may/01/save-800-pounds-year-petrol?

The best bit is that it shows that drivers who think being slow is all that there is to being efficient are wrong.

forgotmyname

Change up at 2000rpm in a diesel?

That would put me below the power and torque in the next gear (1800rpm)

in 6th gear at 50mph i am below the power band and have to use the throttle more to maintain speed. if i increase my speed to 67 my MPG figure actually gets better as that coincides with my maximum torque figure.

tomstickland

Yeah, I didn't get too hung up on that one.

Kilty_2

The biggest one is accelerating hard to then slam on the brakes - smoothing this out definitely makes a big difference to consumption.

Kilty_2

forgotmyname wrote: »

in 6th gear at 50mph i am below the power band and have to use the throttle more to maintain speed. if i increase my speed to 67 my MPG figure actually gets better as that coincides with my maximum torque figure.

Not doing your DPF any favours either if your car has one.

motorguy

How about this in a passat over a 23 mile commute to work?

Kilty_2

OMG.

What kind of roads is that on? And I assume it's a diesel?

somech

Kilty wrote: »

OMG.

What kind of roads is that on? And I assume it's a diesel?

all down hill:)

smitchy73

I've got a 2 litre chrysler sebring, posted before, but about 6 miles twisting up and down hills B class road, then A class single carriageway for about 10 miles, then last 15 miles or so on motorway to city, drive as close the speed limit as possible and where the flow of traffic allows and i'm averaging about 51 mpg, which is about 4 mpg more than book says, if i'm on a longer motorway journey I can get over 60mpg.
It's all about stopping yourself from accelerating then hard braking, which involves reading the road and the flow of traffic and adjusting your accelerator foot instead of braking when needed at the last minute. Also on bendy roads, picking a speed where you don't need to brake on corners is better than thrashing along the straight parts and braking as you go round the bends.
One of my colleagues is IAM trained and gives me hints, he has a 2.0l mondeo and gets on average 61mpg.

tomstickland

The way I see it:
driver A stares about 2m in front of the car so every corner is a surpise. They brake hard because corners are "dangerous" and keep on appearing out of nowhere. They accelerate out the other side in the wrong gear, and do it slowly "to save fuel". They don't monitor their speed, so often accelerate and brake.
On motorways they just travel along the middle lane until they catch something up, then they slow to the speed of the car in front. When that pulls over they accelerate.

Driver B looks far ahead and plans accordingly. They let the car slow naturally in advance of corners, then carry the speed round the corner and come out the other side with little extra work to do. They plan ahead and generally slow well in advance of things so often don't have to come to a complete standstill.
On motorways driver B has a target speed and tries to hold it within +/-1mph for the entire journey by planning lane changes and anticipating events. If they need to adjust downwards they do it early and avoid having to brake.

Driver B obtains far better mpg and often actually gets from A to B in a shorter time.

I generally get just over 50 mpg from my 1.9 TDi and about 1/3 of each tank is driven with no regard for economy. It's the motorway thrashing that brings it down.

skiddlydiddly

I too am IAM trained and although I was getting decent mpg beforehand from my old clio 172(33mpg combined, 45-50mpg on a run).I got it up to 37 mpg combined immediately after the training.

How you drive makes a massive difference to fuel consumption and the majority of us have bad habits like leaving it in too low a gear, not looking far enough ahead and driving too close to the car in front.All contribute hugely to mpg.