Tips on Saving Gas

Gas prices have gone up in a crazy way the past few months. The price of gas is now P58/liter! Up from P40/liter just a few months ago.

It’s almost a sin to drive a Ford Expe­di­tion to Baguio now. With the cur­rent prices and the aver­age gas mileage of an Expe­di­tion (around 4liters/km), you would spend around P5,000.00 to go up to Baguio and another P5,000.00 to go back down. That’s P10,000.00 for a Baguio trip!

If any­thing good can come out of this whole sit­u­a­tion, it will be in really forc­ing us to look at alter­na­tive sources of fuel like LPG, hydro­gen, CNG or even solar power. I hope some­one in Mala­canang is read­ing my blog and tells the President.

But until that time comes, here are tips that might help you save on pre­cious gasoline.

1) Buy gaso­line dur­ing the coolest time of day — early morn­ing or late evening is best. Gas pumps mea­sure vol­ume of gaso­line, not den­sity of fuel con­cen­tra­tion. You are charged accord­ing to “vol­ume of mea­sure­ment”. And when it’s cool, gaso­line is dens­est; so you get more gaso­line dur­ing these times than when it’s hot and gaso­line is thinnest. Addi­tional tip: fill up on a Tues­day or Wednes­day. Prices are usu­ally raised for the week-end or hol­i­days as more peo­ple are dri­ving and the demand is greater.

2) Don’t start and stop engine need­lessly. Idling your engine for one minute con­sumes the gas amount equiv­a­lent to when you start the engine. But any time you fore­see that you will not be mov­ing for more than 30seconds or 1 minute you should turn off the engine–like when you’re wait­ing at long traf­fic light sequences, or while your bet­ter half with­draws money from the ATM.

3) Avoid pro­longed warm­ing up of engine — 30 to 45 sec­onds is already a lot of time for the engine to get warmed up.

4) Turn off air con­di­tioner if pos­si­ble. The com­pres­sor for the air con­di­tioner loads the motor of the car more, using up fuel. Park your car in the shade if you can. Roll down the win­dows just a tiny bit, so the air can cir­cu­late through your car while you are parked (beware of theft though). If it’s really too hot, and you really need to use the air­con, then turn off the AC 5 min­utes before you reach your destination.

5) Roll Up the Win­dows. When the win­dows are down it allows air into the car cre­at­ing resis­tance against the wind which decreases gas mileage as the car has to work harder to accel­er­ate. Use the out­side air vent to bring in fresh air as much as pos­si­ble since run­ning the air con­di­tioner low­ers gas mileage as well (tip #4).

6) Reduce weight in the car. Some physics 101: force equals mass times accel­er­a­tion (yeah yeah, you prob­a­bly know that already) So you can try to reduce the mass of your car by emp­ty­ing out the trunk and remov­ing heavy items that you don’t need (keep your spare tire and car lift, but get rid of the golf bag and gar­den­ing equip­ment). This will effec­tively reduce the mass and you’ll use a lot less gas that way.

7) If you have a man­ual trans­mis­sion and want to save some gas, you need to shift up early and shift down late. Man­ual shift dri­ven cars allow you to change to high­est gear as soon as pos­si­ble, let­ting you save gas in the process. Trav­el­ing at fast rates in low gears can con­sume up to 45% more fuel than is needed.

8) Avoid rough roads when­ever pos­si­ble, because dirt or gravel rob you of up to 30% of your gas mileage.

9) Use alter­nate roads when safer, shorter, straighter. Com­pare trav­el­ing dis­tance dif­fer­ences — but remem­ber that cor­ners, curves and lane jump­ing requires extra gas. The short­est dis­tance between two points is always straight.

10) Park car so that you can later begin to travel in for­ward gear; avoid reverse gear maneu­vers to save gas. Besides it’s more con­ve­nient when you’re in a hurry later on.

11) Use a small car. Remem­ber that mass and accel­er­a­tion equa­tion in #6? Well, a small car always has a bet­ter fuel econ­omy due to its smaller mass. If you are in the mar­ket for a new car, you def­i­nitely should con­sider this.

12) Car­pool. Only if this is pos­si­ble and only if you have reli­able peo­ple you can car­pool with. If two peo­ple are rid­ing in one car, the gas used per per­son is imme­di­ately cut in half. If 4 peo­ple are shar­ing a ride, then you can split the gas bill in four. Back in col­lege, my class­mates who lived in Ala­bang did this.
Its not always fea­si­ble though. My best­friend Mar­ven told me that what they did in their city of Valen­cia was to com­bine trips. If some­one was going to the nearby city of Cagayan de Oro to buy sup­plies, they made sure there was an addi­tional assign­ment for the per­son, like pay bills or make a trans­ac­tion with a gov­ern­ment office. By plan­ning and com­bin­ing trips for errands, shop­ping, etc. you can save not only in gas but in time and wear and tear on your car.

13) Prac­tice Safe Dri­ving. Aggres­sive dri­ving (i.e. weav­ing in and out of traf­fic and fast accel­er­a­tion and brak­ing) is not only a haz­ard but can lower your gas mileage as much as one third.

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