Article provided by CNNMoney.com
Sure you want to save gas, but there's a lot of bad advice on how to do it. Some of it makes no difference, and some of it can wind up costing you. With gasoline prices hitting record levels, it seems everyone has a tip on how to save fuel. Much of the advice is well-intentioned, but in the end, much of it won't lower your gas bill. Here's a look at a few misconceptions:
#1. Fill Your Tank in the Morning
You may have heard that it's best to fill your gas tank in the early morning while the fuel is cold. The theory goes that fluids are more dense at lower temperatures, so a gallon of cold gas actually has more gas molecules than a gallon of warmer gas.
But the temperature of the gasoline as it comes out of the nozzle varies little during the course of the day, according to Consumer Reports, so there's little, if any, benefit, to getting up early to pump gas.
#2. Change Your Air Filter
Maintaining your car is important, but a clean air filter isn't going to save you any gas. Modern engines have computer sensors that automatically adjust the fuel-air mixture as an increasingly clogged air filter chokes off the engine's air supply.
While engine power will decrease slightly as the air filter becomes clogged, a lack of performance or an increase in fuel consumption will be negligible, Consumer Reports says.
#3. Use Premium Fuel
With prices already over $4.00 a gallon, premium gasoline is a hard sell these days. But a lot of drivers think because their owners' manual recommends premium, they'll get better fuel economy if they stick with it. Really, they're paying more money for nothing.
Even cars for which premium is recommended won't suffer with regular fuel. Modern engine technology comes to the rescue again. When sensors detect regular instead of premium fuel, the system automatically adjusts spark plug timing. The result is a slight reduction in peak horsepower - really, you'll never notice - but no reduction in fuel economy.
#4. Pump Up Your Tires
Proper tire inflation is important for a number of reasons. Under-inflated tires are bad for handling and can even cause a crash. Improper tire inflation also causes tires to wear out faster and to heat up more, which could trigger a dangerous high-speed blow-out. According to on-the-road driving tests by both Consumer Reports and auto information site Edmunds.com, underinflated tires reduce fuel economy, so proper inflation is key.
But you should never over-inflate your tires. They'll get you slightly better fuel economy because there will be less tread touching the road, reducing friction. But that means less grip for braking and turning. The added risk of a crash isn't worth the extra mile a gallon you might gain.
#5. To A/C or Not A/C
There's no question air-conditioning makes extra work for the engine, increasing fuel use. But car air conditioners are much more efficient today than they used to be. In around-town driving, using the A/C will drop fuel economy by about a mile a gallon. Meanwhile, driving at higher speeds with the windows down greatly increases aerodynamic drag. As speed increases, drag becomes more of an issue, making A/C use the more efficient choice at high speeds.
At most speeds and in most vehicles, A/C use drains slightly more fuel than driving with the windows down, contends David Champion, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. "My final take on is that it's very close," says Phil Reed, consumer advice editor for Edmunds.com. "It's hard to measure the difference and every vehicle is different."
#6. Bolt-Ons and Pour-Ins
Before you buy a device that's supposed to make your car more fuel-efficient or pour in an allegedly gas-saving additive, ask yourself this: Don't you think oil and car companies aren't doing everything they can to beat their competitors?
If BP could add something to its gasoline that made cars go farther on a gallon, cars would be lining up at the company's pumps. Sure, people would burn their fuel-saving BP gas more slowly, but then they'd drive right past rivals' gas stations to come back to BP for more. BP stations could even charge more for their gas and still sell tons of the stuff.
So if there really was an additive that made gas burn up more slowly, it wouldn't be sold over the Internet one bottle at a time.
"There are a number of these gas-saving devices that are generally useless," says Champion.
Showing posts with label fuel economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fuel economy. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Six Gas-Saving Myths
Friday, June 08, 2007
Poll Says American Car Makers Need More MPG
A poll, sponsored by GasBuddy.com, shows that US car makers need to accomplish two tasks in order for Americans to purchase their vehicles:
First, they need to increase fuel economy. Second, the big three marks need to improve quality and reliability in their vehicles. An overwhelming 78% (13493) chose one of those two answers as the way to get American dollars back into their coffers.
The unscientific poll is ongoing and being sponsored exclusively by GasBuddy.com.
| What do you think is the most important thing American car companies need to do to get people to buy more American cars? (Discuss) | ||
| Increase their cars' fuel efficiency |  | 40% |
| Improve their cars' quality/reliability | | 38% |
| Lower their cars' prices | | 16% |
| Something else | | 3% |
| No opinion | | 1% |
| Total votes: 17298 | ||
Sunday, March 18, 2007
The Race to 100 MPG
Over the past several decades, the promise of the "car of tomorrow" has remained unfulfilled, while the problems it was supposed to solve have only intensified.
The average price of a gallon of gas is higher than at any time since the early 1980s. The Middle East seems more volatile than ever. And even climate skeptics are starting to admit that the carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere might have disastrous consequences. To these circumstances, automakers have responded with a fleet of cars that averages 21 miles per gallon, about 4 mpg worse than the Model T. Yet hope is coming faster than that hydrogen economy you've been hearing about. Several small companies are developing new engine technologies and advanced automotive designs that promise to deliver 100 miles from a single gallon of gas. The proposals run from the simple -- reduce weight, improve aerodynamics -- to the incredible (one company wants to borrow a few tricks from jet engines).
The race should heat up further when the X Prize Foundation -- the group that kick-started the space-tourism industry with its $10 million competition to produce a reusable private spacecraft -- announces in the next few months a competition for the first car to break 100 mpg and sell a yet-to-be-decided number of units. The prize money hadn't been finalized at press time, but X Prize officials are discussing figures in the $25 million range as an appropriate incentive. They hope the prize will urge people to completely reconsider what a car should look like and how it should function. "We need a paradigm shift," says Mark Goodstein, the executive director for the automotive X Prize. "We need to change the way people think about automobiles."
Here are three technologies that auto-industry insiders we consulted think could raise the bar for automotive fuel economy -- and quite possibly secure the X Prize's huge purse.Smaller, better, cheaper
By far the most obvious approach to achieving ultra-high mileage is to dramatically cut weight and wind resistance, the chief enemies of highway mileage. This is the gambit you see in student engineering competitions, in which teardrop-shaped microvehicles on bicycle wheels regularly achieve hundreds of miles to the gallon. But these vehicles are all expensive prototypes. The challenge is to make a light, highly aerodynamic vehicle that's reliable, crash-worthy and, most important, inexpensive to mass-produce.
Steve Fambro may have tinkered his way into the solution. His Aptera, which he designed in his garage in Carlsbad, California, is a three-wheeled, bullet-shaped two-seater that minimizes drag and weighs only 850 pounds (the Toyota Prius weighs 2,890 pounds). He cut bulk by using a carbon composite frame, a race-inspired solution that should help with crash absorption. Fambro's company, Accelerated Composites, is drawing the attention of several venture capitalists, and he hopes to have the Aptera on the market in less than two years. "Everything I had been doing was with an eye toward manufacturability," he says. By using novel composite-construction techniques, including inexpensive molds and automated fabrication processes, Fambro says he can keep the cost per vehicle under $20,000. And when combined with a hybrid engine that burns diesel, the Aptera could break 300 mpg. [As made now, the Aptera achieves 230 mpg.]Hybrids without batteries
The hybrid drivetrain has been the great success story of the high-mileage movement. Cars like the Prius get up to twice the mileage of the industry average partially by recovering energy that's lost as heat during braking, storing that energy in a battery, and reusing it later on. Yet today's most efficient hybrids can recover only 30 percent of that energy for reuse. One radical solution under development at the Environmental Protection Agency's Advanced Technology Division is to get rid of the heavy batteries altogether.
The EPA has built a modified hybrid that uses a hydraulic system, not a battery, to store braking energy. When you press the brakes, the wheels drive a pump that compresses nitrogen gas, which is inexpensive and inert. When you accelerate again, that compressed gas runs the pump in reverse to help power the vehicle. The hydraulic-hybrid system, scheduled to begin testing in two UPS trucks this month, with another to follow next year, promises to return at least 70 percent of the braking energy back to the wheels, which would lead to a 60 to 70 percent jump in fuel economy and a 40 percent reduction in emissions. Perhaps that's why Charles Gray, the director of the Advanced Technology Division and one of the developers of the hydraulic hybrid, can't contain his excitement about its potential. "This is going to be the biggest revolution in automotive history," he declares. "Bigger than the assembly line." That's yet to be seen, of course, but the hydraulic hybrid is also smaller and cheaper than conventional hybrids.
"I can hold a 500-horsepower hydraulic pump motor in my hand, and I'm not a big guy," Gray says. Because the technology would eliminate the need for a transmission -- the engine merely pressurizes the hydraulic system, while the hydraulic motors power the wheels -- and several other parts, it could be installed in a small car for almost no additional cost. Ford, the U.S. Army and others are investigating the technology, yet UPS -- with its fleet of vehicles that constantly suffer through stop-and-go driving -- is its only committed customer so far.Jet-engine inspiration
Another potential player in the race to 100 mpg is the StarRotor, which began life as an air conditioner at Texas A&M University. Chemical-engineering professor Mark Holtzapple and his colleague Andrew Rabroker were attempting to build a better compressor for an air conditioner when they hit on the idea that became the StarRotor engine's basic architecture. Once they made the connection to car engines, "we quickly forgot about air conditioners," Rabroker says. They have since formed a business (also called StarRotor) to commercialize the technology.
The StarRotor uses the same thermodynamic process as jet engines to recuperate some of the heat normally lost to exhaust, something that the design of a piston engine doesn't allow. The exhaust heat warms the air that comes into the engine before the fuel is added. This hot air leads to more powerful combustion, which means the StarRotor can extract more energy from a given amount of fuel than a conventional engine could. Based on data from compressor prototypes, Rabroker believes the StarRotor will convert between 45 and 65 percent of the chemical energy in its fuel to mechanical energy, irrespective of the engine's operating speed or power. In contrast, a typical gasoline engine has a peak efficiency of about 30 percent at full throttle and operates at a much lower efficiency during typical driving conditions. "Double is a gimme," Rabroker says of the StarRotor's potential. "I think we can ultimately triple the fuel mileage."
Double or triple, though, what's important is that innovators are developing solutions to our oil predicament -- solutions that could have a huge influence before the first hydrogen-powered car ever leaves the lot.
The average price of a gallon of gas is higher than at any time since the early 1980s. The Middle East seems more volatile than ever. And even climate skeptics are starting to admit that the carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere might have disastrous consequences. To these circumstances, automakers have responded with a fleet of cars that averages 21 miles per gallon, about 4 mpg worse than the Model T. Yet hope is coming faster than that hydrogen economy you've been hearing about. Several small companies are developing new engine technologies and advanced automotive designs that promise to deliver 100 miles from a single gallon of gas. The proposals run from the simple -- reduce weight, improve aerodynamics -- to the incredible (one company wants to borrow a few tricks from jet engines).
The race should heat up further when the X Prize Foundation -- the group that kick-started the space-tourism industry with its $10 million competition to produce a reusable private spacecraft -- announces in the next few months a competition for the first car to break 100 mpg and sell a yet-to-be-decided number of units. The prize money hadn't been finalized at press time, but X Prize officials are discussing figures in the $25 million range as an appropriate incentive. They hope the prize will urge people to completely reconsider what a car should look like and how it should function. "We need a paradigm shift," says Mark Goodstein, the executive director for the automotive X Prize. "We need to change the way people think about automobiles."
Here are three technologies that auto-industry insiders we consulted think could raise the bar for automotive fuel economy -- and quite possibly secure the X Prize's huge purse.Smaller, better, cheaper
By far the most obvious approach to achieving ultra-high mileage is to dramatically cut weight and wind resistance, the chief enemies of highway mileage. This is the gambit you see in student engineering competitions, in which teardrop-shaped microvehicles on bicycle wheels regularly achieve hundreds of miles to the gallon. But these vehicles are all expensive prototypes. The challenge is to make a light, highly aerodynamic vehicle that's reliable, crash-worthy and, most important, inexpensive to mass-produce.
Steve Fambro may have tinkered his way into the solution. His Aptera, which he designed in his garage in Carlsbad, California, is a three-wheeled, bullet-shaped two-seater that minimizes drag and weighs only 850 pounds (the Toyota Prius weighs 2,890 pounds). He cut bulk by using a carbon composite frame, a race-inspired solution that should help with crash absorption. Fambro's company, Accelerated Composites, is drawing the attention of several venture capitalists, and he hopes to have the Aptera on the market in less than two years. "Everything I had been doing was with an eye toward manufacturability," he says. By using novel composite-construction techniques, including inexpensive molds and automated fabrication processes, Fambro says he can keep the cost per vehicle under $20,000. And when combined with a hybrid engine that burns diesel, the Aptera could break 300 mpg. [As made now, the Aptera achieves 230 mpg.]Hybrids without batteries
The hybrid drivetrain has been the great success story of the high-mileage movement. Cars like the Prius get up to twice the mileage of the industry average partially by recovering energy that's lost as heat during braking, storing that energy in a battery, and reusing it later on. Yet today's most efficient hybrids can recover only 30 percent of that energy for reuse. One radical solution under development at the Environmental Protection Agency's Advanced Technology Division is to get rid of the heavy batteries altogether.
The EPA has built a modified hybrid that uses a hydraulic system, not a battery, to store braking energy. When you press the brakes, the wheels drive a pump that compresses nitrogen gas, which is inexpensive and inert. When you accelerate again, that compressed gas runs the pump in reverse to help power the vehicle. The hydraulic-hybrid system, scheduled to begin testing in two UPS trucks this month, with another to follow next year, promises to return at least 70 percent of the braking energy back to the wheels, which would lead to a 60 to 70 percent jump in fuel economy and a 40 percent reduction in emissions. Perhaps that's why Charles Gray, the director of the Advanced Technology Division and one of the developers of the hydraulic hybrid, can't contain his excitement about its potential. "This is going to be the biggest revolution in automotive history," he declares. "Bigger than the assembly line." That's yet to be seen, of course, but the hydraulic hybrid is also smaller and cheaper than conventional hybrids.
"I can hold a 500-horsepower hydraulic pump motor in my hand, and I'm not a big guy," Gray says. Because the technology would eliminate the need for a transmission -- the engine merely pressurizes the hydraulic system, while the hydraulic motors power the wheels -- and several other parts, it could be installed in a small car for almost no additional cost. Ford, the U.S. Army and others are investigating the technology, yet UPS -- with its fleet of vehicles that constantly suffer through stop-and-go driving -- is its only committed customer so far.Jet-engine inspiration
Another potential player in the race to 100 mpg is the StarRotor, which began life as an air conditioner at Texas A&M University. Chemical-engineering professor Mark Holtzapple and his colleague Andrew Rabroker were attempting to build a better compressor for an air conditioner when they hit on the idea that became the StarRotor engine's basic architecture. Once they made the connection to car engines, "we quickly forgot about air conditioners," Rabroker says. They have since formed a business (also called StarRotor) to commercialize the technology.
The StarRotor uses the same thermodynamic process as jet engines to recuperate some of the heat normally lost to exhaust, something that the design of a piston engine doesn't allow. The exhaust heat warms the air that comes into the engine before the fuel is added. This hot air leads to more powerful combustion, which means the StarRotor can extract more energy from a given amount of fuel than a conventional engine could. Based on data from compressor prototypes, Rabroker believes the StarRotor will convert between 45 and 65 percent of the chemical energy in its fuel to mechanical energy, irrespective of the engine's operating speed or power. In contrast, a typical gasoline engine has a peak efficiency of about 30 percent at full throttle and operates at a much lower efficiency during typical driving conditions. "Double is a gimme," Rabroker says of the StarRotor's potential. "I think we can ultimately triple the fuel mileage."
Double or triple, though, what's important is that innovators are developing solutions to our oil predicament -- solutions that could have a huge influence before the first hydrogen-powered car ever leaves the lot.
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