As the summer driving season begins in earnest, keeping an eye on your fuel economy can put dollars in your pocket.
The folks behind the invaluable website Fueleconomy.gov — the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency — offer some new tips.
First is a new feature that lets you get a detailed cost estimate of your trips and compare the cost of different routes and vehicles. Called My Trip Calculator (fueleconomy.gov/trip), it’s full of surprises.
For instance, fuel for a family trip from Birmingham to Cedar Point would cost $14.93 in a 2014 Honda Accord, $20.77 in a 2014 Chrysler Town & Country minivan and $12.34 in a 2014 Chevrolet Cruze diesel compact.
There’s one surprising omission in the site’s calculations: It expects you to estimate what percentage of your trip is highway versus city driving, rather than using the mapping database for specific figures. (Based on the route directions, I told it to assume 85% highway for the Cedar Point trip.) Despite that oversight, the site allows you to compare the cost of different vehicles and routes.
You can also program multiple stops. If you continued from Cedar Point for a weekend at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, for instance, the cost rises to $47.93 in the Accord, $66.70 in the minivan and $39.66 in the Cruze diesel.
Fueleconomy.gov also offers tips to maximize the miles per gallon of hybrids, electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.
Among the suggestions:
■ Keep EV and plug-in batteries fully charged. Contrary to popular opinion, frequent charges to top off lithium-ion batteries do not reduce a battery’s storage capacity or shorten its life. Full charges also maximize the distance plug-ins cover before their gasoline engines take over.
■ Avoid hard braking. Steady, gentle braking maximizes the amount of regenerative energy that’s pumped back into the batteries.
■ Use the economy mode. It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t. The econ mode affects other systems, particularly climate control and acceleration, but you won’t know if the change bothers you unless you try it.
So that's what the little picture of a tire is for
Few things a driver does have a bigger effect on fuel economy than proper tire inflation. The tire pressure monitors that have been mandatory on all new vehicles since model year 2008 should make that easy, but a whopping 42% of drivers have no idea what the tire pressure warning means, according to Schrader International, a supplier of sensors.
U.S. government statistics say underinflated tires lead to 660 deaths and 33,000 injuries annually. Correct tire pressure improves fuel economy 3.3%, but American drivers waste 3.5 million gallons of gasoline a day because of under-inflated tires.
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