{"id":5971,"date":"2015-07-29T06:35:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T20:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.privatefleet.com.au\/?p=5971"},"modified":"2020-06-20T01:05:07","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T15:05:07","slug":"those-fuel-consumption-figures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/buy-new-car\/those-fuel-consumption-figures\/","title":{"rendered":"Those Fuel Consumption Figures\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FuelConsumptionLabel\"<\/a>I don\u2019t know what you look at first when you think about buying a new car and comb through all the stats in a car review <\/a>\u00a0to see what it\u2019s like. For me, the fuel economy figures would have to be just about top of the list, jostling for space with details like the size of the boot and the number of doors and seats.\u00a0 However, have you ever noticed that when you actually purchase your new car, you never seem to get the same fuel economy figures that the sticker on the windscreen says?<\/p>\n

Sometimes, the reason why you\u2019re not quite wringing the same economy out of your little car is obvious: you may like to accelerate and go fast, you may do heaps of towing, or you may do heaps more stopping and starting and idling than the average driver.\u00a0 However, even if you\u2019re a light-footed driver who does the average commute, you still might not match the figures in the review or brochure.\u00a0 So what on earth is going on?\u00a0 Are you a worse driver than you think you are?\u00a0 How do they get those fuel consumption figures anyway?<\/p>\n

You might imagine that the way the official boffins get the figures is to take the test vehicle and actually drive it around a test track for 100 km at open road speeds, at urban speeds with a few stops to mimic traffic lights and a mixture of both.\u00a0 That would give a fair impression of what the fuel economy stats actually are in real life conditions, you would think.<\/p>\n

However, this is what they don\u2019t do.\u00a0 During the testing process in most parts of the world, the testing gets done in a lab under controlled conditions.\u00a0 It\u2019s like the experiments we did in science class at school, where there\u2019s only one variable to be tested and everything else is exactly the same. This does mean that the fuel economy stats aren\u2019t going to be skewed by things like a headwind during the testing process so you can compare car with car, but it\u2019s still a bit disappointing for the average driver.<\/p>\n

During the test in the lab, the vehicle gets put on a dynamometer or a rolling road for about 20 minutes.\u00a0 The temperature is somewhere between 20\u00b0C and 30\u00b0C, and the cars being tested have been nicely run in and are tested from a cold start.\u00a0 During the test for urban figures, the car \u201cdrives\u201d for 4 km with a maximum speed of 50 km\/h, a few stops and a fair bit of idling, for an average speed of 19 km\/h.\u00a0 For the open road speed, the car covers 7 km, gets up to a maximum of 120 km\/h and averages 63 km\/h.\u00a0 Each test gets repeated a few times \u2013 about four times, according to one source.\u00a0 To get the combined figure, they get the average of the two figures weighted by the distance covered in each test.\u00a0 \u00a0OK, this is a fairly simplified description of the procedure, and if you want to know all the details and all the maths, you can read it at https:\/\/www.comlaw.gov.au\/Details\/F2012C00282\/Html\/Volume_4<\/a><\/p>\n

The regulations state that \u201cOnly the equipment necessary for the operation of the vehicle during the test shall be in use.\u201d They also state that the air con needs to be switched off and the heating should be at \u201cnormal\u201d (like you do when driving around when the thermometer hits 27\u00b0C?).\u00a0 The widest tyres should be used.\u00a0 The lights and indicators should be off.\u00a0 The slope of the road should be no more than 2%, the top wind speed should be 3 m\/s on average (that\u2019s about 11 km\/h) and the track should be dry.\u00a0 Tyre pressure should be whatever\u2019s specified by the manufacturers (and you can bet that they\u2019ll put it on the harder side during testing to get more frugal figures). Need we add that there\u2019s probably only going to be one person in the car (unless they get a robot to do it somehow) and the boot will be empty?<\/p>\n

Yes, well, we all drive on perfectly dry roads that are practically flat on windless days with nothing in the boot and with the air con off and the windows up (on a hot day?) and the mirrors folded back as sleekly as possible to minimise drag.\u00a0 And we don\u2019t touch the indicators or the lights at all.\u00a0 Which is what the manufacturers were doing when they got the test stats so they could get them looking as attractive as possible.<\/p>\n

Back in the real world, you\u2019re going to have wet roads, slopes and headwinds.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to use the headlights and the indicators.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to have kids, the dog and the groceries loading up the car adding to the weight and thus the amount of energy needed to move the car.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to have the air con on (or you\u2019re going to open the window at lower speeds) to keep cool.\u00a0 You\u2019ll put on the radio (and have the aerial up \u2013 you can bet that they\u2019ll put it down during the tests to reduce even the teeniest bit of drag).\u00a0 You\u2019ll plant the right foot occasionally to nip into a gap or to overtake.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to idle more than the urban test does, and you\u2019re going to average higher speeds on the open road than what happens in the test. So you\u2019re not ever going to get the same fuel economy figures that the brochure or the car review tells you.<\/p>\n

The moral?\u00a0 There are two of them.\u00a0 Number 1 is to read the fuel economy figures by all means \u2013 they\u2019ll help you compare car with car (although common sense tells you that a little Honda Jazz <\/a>\u00a0is going to have better fuel economy than a monstrous big HSV <\/a>).\u00a0 But take them with a grain of salt.\u00a0 Number 2 is to make your driving as close as possible to test conditions\u2026 But use the indicators and the headlights \u2013 please!<\/p>\n

Safe and happy driving,<\/p>\n

Megan http:\/\/credit-n.ru\/offers-zaim\/moneyman-srochnye-zaimy-online.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know what you look at first when you think about buying a new car and comb through all the stats in a car review \u00a0to see what it\u2019s like. For me, the fuel economy figures would have to be just about top of the list, jostling for space with details like the size […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buy-new-car"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971","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=5971"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11690,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971\/revisions\/11690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}