i was driving behind another car today and they wrote on their back window "save gas, drive the speed limit" and i thought, ya whatever blah blah but then i was thinking about it, would that really make that much of a difference?
Depends much on the car, however the faster you drive at highway speeds especially the higher rpm your engine runs at which = more gas consumed per second driving, but on the plus side you're to your destination faster.
..and you might be speeding to stay ahead of traffic when getting caught in it means a lot of time and gas or petrol or whatever you may call it. In theory, the faster you go, the more fuel you're burning but there is an ideal speed (or engine revs and gear rather) at which you get the best of speed and fuel consumption. So it really depends what you mean...
HU is correct. It's like anything else - dieting, quitting smoking, giving up crack, cleaning the bathroom - thinking about it isn't enough - you actually have to do it. Which really sucks when you think about it...
Actually it makes a lot of difference. All internal combustion engines have a range of speed in which they have the greatest efficiency. Many cars have a green zone in their speedometers and tachometers (rpm meters)...check if your car has got one..that will indicate most efficient speed conditions for your car and engine.
It depends on the car really. In some cases it better to go accelerate quickly. Also 5th gear tends to be the economy one.
My car has 6 gears, realy makes the car barely idle even at high way speeds. It does improve fuel economy, hopefully more cars will have the option in the coming years.
The thing i dont get is American tendency to buy cars with huge engines. For me 1.3 is enough. Well i will probably get 1.8 next year when i can afford the insurance. A friend of mine just got back from Bronx. He could hardly find cars bellow 3.0 in NY. Why do you need all this power? Especially taxis. Surely this does not help petrol consumtion either.
We like to go fast. My main car has a 3.0 litre, my summer driver is a 5.7 litre but I hope to have that increased in due time However cars 2.0 and below are easy to come by, they are the lower line of the cars. Most cars you can not get the advanced features unless you also upgrade the engine as well. So many times if someone wants leather for instance they may have no choice but to go with the more powerful engine.
I guess here in UK you hardly get any space for speeding with narrow roads, humps, roundabouts and speed cams.
Plus 'not ripping' but in the US we've got wide open roads that are probally longer than the UK itself.
OK. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration But I recall driving along the highway years ago in Connecticut and the stores just seems to go on forever, lining both sides of the road for miles...