Owning a family car is convenient but it also adds to your monthly expenses in terms of fuelling and servicing the car. The car insurance premiums further makes the financial burden of owning a car even heavier.
As a money-savvy family, you should find ways to minimize the car maintenance costs without affecting your comfort and convenience and put your safety at risk.
By improving your cars’ fuel economy, you reduce its emissions to the environment and save some money you would have otherwise spent to quench your car’s thirst.
Below are ways to improve your car’s fuel economy.
Drive smoothly
You don’t need to have attended the Diesel Technician Schools In Florida to know that your driving habits have an impact on your car’s mechanical condition and fuel consumption.
Drive carefully and accelerate and slow down smoothly as opposed to stepping on the gas pedal with all your might and slamming on the breaks with equal force.
You improve your gas mileage by gradually accelerating and decelerating instead of short burst of speed followed by a screeching halt to avoid collisions with other motorists and speed bumps. This kind of careless and erratic driving wears down your vehicle faster meaning higher maintenance costs and also endangers your life and that of your family.
Keep the air conditioner off
Although an electrical component of the car meaning it is driven by the car’s battery instead of the fuel, having the air conditioner on still increases your fuel consumption. Here’s how it works: more electric power is drawn out of the battery when the air conditioner is on and the car battery gets charged by the engine. What this means is that more fuel has to be consumed to meet the increased demand from the battery.
Keep the air conditioner off when over short distances and keep the windows open for ventilation. For long-distance driving at moderately high speeds, closing the windows and turning on the air conditioner is the smartest thing to do.
This is because open windows increase the wind drag on your car which needs more fuel to be burned for the car to maintain its speed.
Watch your driving terrain
You might want to reconsider the roads you use when taking the family on a picnic or a road trip. Bad roads take away some forward motion from your vehicle in mechanical vibrations and this slows down the vehicle. You are better off taking the long route with good roads than the shortcut with rough terrain.
To maintain the same speed or accelerate, the driver then has to apply more throttle which increases your fuel consumption.
Good smooth roads, on the other hand, present a better gas mileage since there little resistance.
Combine your trips
Your car consumes significantly more fuel when you cold start it since the engine has to be warmed up. You use more fuel when you make several trips in a day with the car resting in between your errands and has to be cold started again.
It’s more economical if you combine your errands into one trip.