Improving your fuel efficiency by even 1 MPG can save you thousands of dollars per year. In addition to not only saving money from increasing fuel efficiency, one will be preventing wear on their vehicle and improving road safety. By adopting these ten steps one will be able to get better gas mileage in their truck and reap the benefits of it.
What Is Fuel Efficiency?
Fuel efficiency, in its simplest terms, is the ability a vehicle has to convert energy from fuel. Some interchangeably use this word with fuel consumption or fuel economy. Essentially, it refers to how much fuel a vehicle consumes while traveling a certain distance. Finding ways to preserve this fuel helps you save money and practice safe driving habits.
10 Steps for Increasing Fuel Efficiency
Here are our top ten recommendations for lowering your fuel consumption and carbon emissions up to 25%.
Step 1: Reduce Unncessary Driving
If you’re driving out of your way to reach gas stations, you’re wasting fuel and time. Find the biggest savings and avoid out-of-network fees on your fuel card by using a universally accepted fuel card. Cards like AtoB offer discounts at every station that takes Visa. Streamline your route and stop where it makes the most sense, cutting out unnecessary fuel waste.
Step 1: Be Cautious With Your Speed
Accelerating gently and maintaining a steady speed can help you increase fuel efficiency. Varying speeds within one hour of driving have been shown to increase your fuel use by up to 20%. Although increasing and decreasing your speeds abruptly may be out of your control, being mindful of these variations is important to persevering your fuel. Keep in mind that every 1 MPH increase directly results in a .14 MPG decrease in fuel.
Step 2: Avoid Idling
One hour of idling burns roughly a gallon of fuel, so minimize this as much as you can. You can prevent this by turning off the engine if you know you are going to be stopped for more than a minute or two. If you’re at a stop light, even a long one, running your engine won’t be the end of the world.
Step 3: Coast to Decelerate
Instead of using your brakes, you can utilize your forward momentum with coasting. As a mindful driver, you can anticipate when you should start slowing down, this is when you can start to coast to decelerate. By doing this, you will be conserving your vehicle’s fuel consumption instead of hitting your brakes.
Step 4: Look at Your Tire Pressure
Although this may seem unrelated to fuel efficiency, an under-inflated tire can increase your fuel consumption by up to 4%. Ensure that these tires are well inflated to conserve as much fuel as you can. Additionally, this will allow you to adopt better maintenance habits by constantly checking your tire pressure.
Step 5: Lighten the Load
This may seem obvious, but hauling around unnecessary items can make you burn more gas. Lighter trucks need less fuel to haul, so lighten your load as much as possible. Look through the items and ask yourself if it is absolutely necessary to bring these around. If you are uncertain if something you are hauling around is absolutely vital, put it somewhere else safe when driving!
H3: Step 6: Plan Ahead
Planning ahead is a simple but crucial tactic when it comes to conversing fuel. Although you should always expect traffic, try to find routes to avoid it or drive during non-busy hours to prevent these hold-ups. Moreover, finding shorter routes will not only help you save time but it will increase fuel efficiency.
Step 7: Use a Lower-Viscosity Oil
Using a high viscosity oil will impact how much MPG you will be able to obtain. This is due to the thick oil increasing the load on the pump. Utilizing a lower-viscosity oil during the winter will be able to increase your fuel efficiency. However, if this is not an option for you, regular oil changes are highly recommended to prevent the oil from getting thick.
Step 8: Minimize Air Conditioning
Air conditioning burns an excessive amount of fuel. By minimizing the air conditioning, you will be able to preserve as much as 20% of fuel efficiency. Finding other ways to cool down, such as driving with the window downs or purchasing a handheld fan, can be a great alternative. However, if air conditioning is a must use the re-circulate option to lessen this impact.
Step 9: Vehicle Alignment & Fan Inspection
One should check both their vehicle alignment and fan engine in order to preserve fuel. If your vehicle is not aligned properly, you are preventing your vehicle from utilizing its full potential. For example, even if the tire is ¼ degree away from perfectly straight, it will try to move 15 feet sideways every mile. Moreover, inspect your engine fan if it is running correctly since it can burn an unnecessary amount of fuel.
Step 10: Avoid High Speeds
Similarly to maintaining a steady speed, one should try to avoid high speeds as much as possible. Speed limits such as 74 MPH can result in your vehicle using 20% more fuel than in zones such as 50 MPH. Although avoiding these high speeds may be unpreventable, it is useful to keep in mind when driving and planning out routes.
Leverage Your Fuel Efficiency
By implementing these ten techniques, one will be able to save thousands of dollars of fuel each year. In addition, you will be grossly decreasing your carbon footprint which is very important. Although not every one of these techniques can apply to every driver, take whatever works best for you. Using even one of these simple tactics can help you increase your fuel efficiency in no time.
FAQ
One can try to avoid high speed zones and try to maintain a steady speed. Moreover one should try to use less air conditioning and lighten your hauling load if possible.
Driving conservatively can help you increase fuel efficiency.
Yes, driving slower does save fuel. This is because speeding increases the amount of fuel consumption the vehicle takes.
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