{"id":2483,"date":"2013-02-25T07:34:48","date_gmt":"2013-02-24T21:34:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=2483"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:39:59","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:39:59","slug":"fuel-economy-myth-or-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/home\/fuel-economy-myth-or-fact\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuel Economy: Myth or Fact?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wringing the most out of our fuel is very much the in thing, whether you\u2019re a greenie or a meanie. Information about what you can do to save fuel and improve your car\u2019s fuel economy gets handed on and handed around. But are some of the things that Uncle Fred taught you actually going to help improve your fuel economy?\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2022 Myth or Fact? You need to warm your car up before you can drive it properly.<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Myth<\/strong>. Even if you are in the chilliest parts of the world, you don\u2019t need to warm a car up before you can drive it. Sure, you might need to apply the choke for a little bit in the depths of winter, but if the engine is turning over, you\u2019ve got the energy needed to turn the wheels. If you do use the choke, remember to turn close it off after about five minutes.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Myth or Fact? Small cars are more economical than large cars.<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Myth<\/strong>. As my fellow-blogger David commented, fuel economy is getting very, very sexy in the motoring world, and the guys and girls who come up with car ads are just as likely to mention the fuel economy figures as they are to mention the torque. This means that fuel-saving technology is being applied to medium-sized and even large cars. This is good news of all of us for whom a little Honda Jazz<\/a> \u00a0or similar is impractical \u2013 there\u2019s no need to jam a family of leggy teenagers into the back of a little hatchback in the interest of saving fuel.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Myth or fact? Driving less aggressively is more fuel efficient.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2022 Fact<\/strong>. If you demand less of the car, it can work more efficiently. Feather-light touches on the accelerator, gentle braking and smooth cornering are easy on the car and mean that it uses less fuel. Fierce acceleration, hard braking and tight cornering might be all right on the race track but are bad for fuel economy, as well as making you obnoxious on the road to your fellow drivers. This is anecdotal evidence, but I\u2019ve recently picked up a 4-litre Ford Fairlane<\/a> . Keeping a light foot keeps the average fuel consumption (according to the trip computer) nice and low. Plant the boot and the figures soar. Think of the effortless and graceful soaring of a seagull or an eagle compared to the aggressive and frantic flapping of a chook.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Myth or fact? After-market additives and thingummies can make your car run better.<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Myth<\/strong>. According to a Reader\u2019s Digest article and the US Department of Energy, most gadgets and additives that you chuck in along with your petrol don\u2019t make your car any more efficient, and the only thing that they clean out is your wallet. The exception is a full conversion to LPG or something along those lines.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Myth or fact? Replacing your air filter will improve your fuel economy.<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Fact \u2013<\/strong> sort of.<\/strong> Changing the air filter does indeed improve the fuel economy of older cars. However, with modern cars, changing the air filter improves the performance but doesn\u2019t actually improve the fuel economy. This is because a lot of modern engines have computerised controls that maintain the right fuel to air ratio, no matter what state the filter\u2019s in.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Myth or fact? Idling uses more fuel than restarting your car.<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Fact<\/strong>. If you have to wait for that person who\u2019s running late or if you\u2019re held up by road works, switching the engine right off and restarting it again uses a lot less fuel. OK, it might not be a good idea to do this at the traffic lights, unless you know that you\u2019re going to have to wait a long time until the lights go green. http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/business-kredit.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wringing the most out of our fuel is very much the in thing, whether you\u2019re a greenie or a meanie. Information about what you can do to save fuel and improve your car\u2019s fuel economy gets handed on and handed around. But are some of the things that Uncle Fred taught you actually going to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2483"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12216,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2483\/revisions\/12216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}