'Petrol efficiency experiment; an increase of 20%' blog discussion

Idiophreak

Eric_Pisch wrote: »

i couldn't be this sad, id rather spend the extra £10 on petrol a week and enjoy driving

Great if A) You do low mileage and you have £10/week to spend on "fun driving"

Personally, I've found I can get fantastic savings by driving more sensibly - and I don't do massive mileage. I've been playing around and my results are:

* 34mpg for driving around nice and fast, accelerating and braking moderately hard, making time on motorways and duel carriageways.

* 41mpg for sticking to 70, but otherwise driving normally.

* 55mpg for reducing top speed to 56mph and being careful with acceleration and braking.

In real terms, this means me filling up 3 times a month instead of 5 - at £45-50 a pop...That's a saving of £20-25/week overall, just for leaving an extra 4 mins (max) for my commute each way.

I can also make further savings on certain routes...as more often than not, the "shortest" route becomes faster than the "quickest" route when you reduce your top speed...So I'm getting better economy *and* covering less miles.

I guess it's different strokes for different folks. You enjoy your driving, I'd rather have an extra £20 beer money on a Friday night

ETA: £100/month more in my bank account is more or less equivalent to a £2k pay rise - £2k extra for "working" 8 minutes a day seems like a fair deal to me.

Paul_Wilkinson

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DrGadget

Last year I was getting silly miles per gallon. Something like 12 to 15 at most. Costing me a fortune. Then I had a problem with the engine.
I removed the tired thirsty 3.0litre carbed lump and replaced it with a 2.0 8V DOHC EFI power unit.
Now on a run I'm getting around 30 MPG! Double what I previously got.
I do not tend to use the car much now either as have good transport where I live and I could walk to town if I wanted.
So MASSIVE savings all round.
If I could afford to convert to LPG it would cost me peanuts to run.
I do like some of the ideas on here though and although I am more aware of how I drive now there are the odd times when I don't drive as economically as I could.

JACIAN

Hi Martin

Thought I'd share my tip for saving fuel. I find the cruise control on my Ford C-Max 2.0 diesel automatic is invaluable when driving on motorways. I was initially frightened of it as it felt strange taking my foot off the gas and letting the car do the work but now I think it's brilliant. I just set the cruise control to 68 mpg which keeps the revs at just below 2000. The digital reading which tells you how many miles to go before empty hardly moves and sometimes increases! I use it most of the time now when driving on motorways and reckon I've reduced my petrol bill by half!!. Of course, I also try to follow the usual tips of maintaining the tyre pressures and slowing down and accelerating gradually. Happy motoring.:j

techno12

Thought I'd try a test up the M6.

I occasionally drive up north to see family, about 220 miles each way.

When I did this back in April it cost me around £80 in petrol (I have a 2001 Astra). This was me doing my normal 70-80mph range.

This time I decided to stick to 55-65mph, being a bore in the inside lane. Quite a frustrating pair of drives, but it only cost me £65, and petrol is slightly more expensive now than it was during my last trip.

I was quite surprised how much I saved by doing this, though judging by the fact that 99% of cars were passing me not a lot of others are MSE about this ;-)

CKhalvashi

I've given this a go, from Constanta to Bucharest and back today.

The car was indicating it did around 35mpg on a trip to Brasov last week, and whilst I've not taken the crap out the boot, using the paddle shift gearbox (the car's not been above 1400rpm (70mph in 8th), and has been changing up at 1200) and monitoring braking has brought an indicated mpg of 69.2, which is usually about 5% optimistic, across a variety of roads. :eek:

I've got a 3.0 diesel Jag estate, and usually get indicated of 49ish, and actual of 45ish. Brasov was probably only so low, as it was red lined/heavy braking on the Transfagarisan stretch!

CK

alandbailey

I did what I was taught in the sixties,cresting a hill I noticed I was in a 30mph limit. I took my foot off the accelerator to let the engine slow me down, rather than slamming on the brakes. I got caught by a mobile speed camera and was fined £60. Obviously it does not pay to drive sensibly!:(

System

crossleydd42 wrote: »

56mph is used because it is the highest speed one can travel at without incurring [significant] wind resistance.

56mph was chosen as it aligns with continental Europe's figure of 90kmph used to measure fuel consumption. It allows straight comparisons.

The same reason why HGV's are supposedly limited to 56mph in the UK by EU regulations (I know we left our regulations at 60mph).

Idiophreak

alandbailey wrote: »

I did what I was taught in the sixties,cresting a hill I noticed I was in a 30mph limit. I took my foot off the accelerator to let the engine slow me down, rather than slamming on the brakes. I got caught by a mobile speed camera and was fined £60. Obviously it does not pay to drive sensibly!:(

I'm fairly sure "driving sensibly" includes sticking to the speed limit, reading road signs, stuff like that...

charlieheard

Realised it's been a while since I posted on here. We've now gone over to the DERV side and own 2 diesels. Surprisingly, our 1.4D Yaris is not much more ecomonical than our old 1.0 petrol, though, in mitigation, the car has grown significantly in size. Driving the same route to/from work every day, our MPG is now 60-61 instead of 58-59, so fuel costs have gone up even ignoring inflation.

Our other car was a 2.0 petrol automatic MPV, which was not that economical! We now have a 1.6D manual, which has six speeds and lots of bells and whistles, including cruise control. It beats 40mpg on short journeys, and the best I've had is 49 on a long, slow motorway journey. I find that using the cruise control as much as possible improves my mpg considerably. On longer 30mph stretches, it also helps me keep inside the speed limit and is probably safer, as I can cover the brake with my right foot instead of having it on the accelerator which must save a few tenths of a second if I ever have to do an emergency stop.

On longer journeys, I find it helps to maintain a constant speed, and it's surprising how many people yoyo past me as they speed up and slow down. That can't be good for their economy. Even then, slowing down by 5mph increases the economy by 3-4mpg. IMHO life's too short to make long, motorway journeys at 60mph, but I'm sure it would improve my overall mpg considerably