Tips on How to Conserve Gas During a Long Trip

Petrol and diesel prices have been slowly edging up, long road trips are becoming a source of dread. Driving a few hundred miles takes huge costs. These tips will help you conserve your fuel:

Drive the right car

If you’re choosing between more than one car, squeezing everyone to the one or two cars that are most fuel efficient may not the smartest move. For instance, you’re not going to save much gas by splitting your crew into two small cars instead jumping on the bigger SUV. Two cars combined will probably burn more gas than one SUV. Also, loading too much on a small car; loading the roof-top racks and bins will hugely undermine their fuel economy.

Avoid traffic jams

One of the worst places you can possibly be caught on is in rush hour traffic, it will also add to your travelling costs. Your car needs a huge amount of fuel and first gear to move again every time you stop and start in traffic. The best solution is to avoid traffic jams as much as possible. If you get caught in one, you can save fuel by understanding what’s going on in front of you and instead of accelerating and braking, travel steadily and in low speed.

Close windows and get rid of the roof rack.

Open windows don’t pose much of a problem when driving in town, but when you’re on a highway moving at high-speed, aerodynamics comes into play. Car designers try to reduce the drag by designing sleek cars. The roof rack, open windows and an open sunroof increase drag and make your car more expensive to run. You can only do so much about the design of your car but you can remove the roof rack and close the sunroof and windows.

Fill your tires properly

Proper vehicle maintenance is critical. Ensure you tires are properly inflated before you embark on your trip, the newer car models have tire pressure monitors which make pressure monitoring pretty easy. Typically, the manufacturer- recommended tire pressure is labeled on the driver’s side door. Over or under-inflation reduces the life span of your tires drastically, it also increases your car’s gas consumption by up to 1 percent.

Use Cruise Control.

There are times when using cruise control is a bad idea, such as in bad weather or in a heavy traffic jam. Also, if you’re driving on hilly terrain, using cruise control can actually make your vehicle burn more fuel as it struggles to maintain speed up the hills. However if you’re driving on an even and clear road, cruise control will help prevent unnecessary speed changes which burn more fuel. Cruise control also prevents speed creep – the propensity to progressively increase speed as you drive – that can also keep you off trouble with the highway patrol.

Stay on the right

Driving too fast wastes gas, even if you’re driving at a constant speed. For every 10 miles per hour acceleration, your fuel economy reduces by 15% to 20%. Going too slow is not very safe either; you should try to avoid the left lane where traffic is flowing at the highest speed.