Fuel-Efficient Driving Tips To Save You Money

Sense & Sensibility

It’s surprising how easy it is to save quite a lot of money in vehicle running costs by doing just a few simple things….

1. Avoid idling your vehicle

This may seem like an obvious one, but every second your vehicle’s engine is running it is consuming fuel. Leaving your car running for those extra two minutes once parked up to look at your phone is wasting fuel and adding to your emissions output.

Try to avoid idling your vehicle at all. Check traffic reports and maps to see if there is a route that will avoid sitting in standstill queues. Warm up the car while on the move instead of idling, you may be cold for those first few minutes, but the car will soon heat up and you will have saved fuel.

Contrary to popular belief, restarting your car does not burn more fuel than leaving it idling. In fact, idling for just 10 seconds wastes more fuel than restarting the engine. If you are likely to be stopped for more than 10 seconds, switch your engine off., this is why many modern models have stop-start technology.

2. Check your tyre pressure

The lower the tyre pressure the harder they have to work to move the vehicle, this causes the engine to work harder and, as a result, burn more fuel. Regularly check the pressure of all tyres at the local petrol station, if they are low fill them up to the optimum pressure for your car.

3. Don’t carry unnecessary weight

Just as with humans feeling the burn when carrying heavy items, cars also burn more energy carrying heavy loads. To improve your car’s fuel efficiency ensure you are not carrying any unnecessary weight.

A pushchair in the boot when the car is being used for work, a roof rack when it is not holiday season and any other additional weight will burn more fuel, and a hole in your pocket too. Remove these items to lighten the load.

4. Combine trips

It is not always possible to know what trips will be happening during the day, but if you have a routine such as picking up children from school, you could make sure other journeys during the day coincide with this scheduled trip.

For example, if you know in the morning that you need to pick up some shopping, set off earlier than you usually would for pick up to grab those items from the shop before. This means you only need to take the car out twice (drop off, shopping and pick up) rather than making three separate round trips.

5. Maintain a steady speed

It is tempting, when the road is clear, to accelerate at every given opportunity. This will often mean the driver is accelerating and braking as the condition of the road changes along their journey. This sudden increase in speed requires a burst of energy, energy that uses fuel.

Keeping a steady speed uses fuel efficiently. This doesn’t mean flooring it down the motorway at 80mph the whole way is the answer. Driving at 80mph uses up to 25% more fuel than going at 70mph. Dropping the speed to 60mph will save another 15%. Stick to speed limits and avoid fluctuations.

6. Stop over-revving your engine

Letting your revs get too high before changing gears is also a sure-fire way to burn unnecessary amounts of fuel. The loud noise your engine makes when it is in the wrong gear means it is working too hard and therefore using a lot of fuel.

Make sure you change up gears at 2000rpm in a diesel car and 2500rpm in a petrol car. Changing up too early can also increase your consumption, so make sure you listen to your engine and change when it is right.”