When it comes to owning a car, the fuel cost will affect how much a car would cost you over some time. It does not mean that you should not enjoy your drive or keep worrying about how much mpg or kmpl fuel economy your car is giving, but increased car mileage would be good for your pocket and the planet!
When your car consumes greater liter of fuel per kilometer, your fuel consumption goes up. This happens for both the petrol and diesel car owners. While fuel prices are going high, better fuel economy would help you in the long run. So, here are the top six bad habits, that are killing your car mileage and you should avoid these habits to save fuel and improve fuel efficiency.
1. Overloading
Every car you see on the road today has a safe loading limit for them to function efficiently. If you are loading more people in your car than the recommended safety rating from the brand, you will end up stressing up the engine components, car’s chassis, tires, and interiors as well. This translates to your engine working even harder to pull the load and struggling to put power on the ground.
Overloading would kill your car’s fuel efficiency significantly. Avoid unnecessary short trips with extra load in your car. Correct tire pressure will also affect the rolling resistance of the car, thus keep your tires inflated as per the vehicle owner’s manual and load in the vehicle.
2. Harsh Acceleration and Braking
Harsh acceleration and braking without any reason are the worst enemies of your car mileage. If you are driving around in the city, sudden acceleration and braking between signals or traffic conditions will make your engine gulp a lot of fuel in one go.
Make sure to keep your footlight on the accelerator paddle when you are in stop-and-go traffic or even on the highway. Slowly picking up the pace will help you conserve fuel. If you accelerate too fast, the open throttle will pass more fuel into the engine, resulting in lesser fuel efficiency in your car. Avoiding sudden acceleration and driving at a steady speed will impact fuel economy.
3. Not Maintaining The Right Tyre Pressure
Tyre pressure plays an important role in improving fuel efficiency. Keeping your tires underinflated will increase the surface area with the roads, resulting in more friction and load on your car’s engine. This will decrease your car mileage. Make sure to maintain a tire pressure that is recommended by your car’s manufacturer.
The recommended car tire pressure can be found on the driver-side door panel. Just like low air pressure, a roof rack might affect a car’s mileage. Thus, when you are planning to go at high speeds, to avoid wind resistance, remove your roof rack.
4. Missing the Periodic Servicing
Maintaining your car by getting periodic servicing done will help your car achieve the most efficient stage for the engine. Adding engine oil and coolant on time, and changing great oil, belts, and battery would reduce access load on the engine, resulting in good fuel efficiency.
So, if you are not getting your car serviced at the right time, you will hurt your car mileage.
5. Idling in The Vehicle
Keeping your car on idle running speed will result in low mileage. When the engine keeps running in the idle state with or without having the air conditioner ON, the car consumes more fuel to keep the engine active. Just like unnecessary acceleration and braking, your average fuel economy is also dependent on how much you idle your engine.
So, when you are waiting on the traffic signal or have taken a fuel stop, make sure to stop your engine and improve mileage.
6. Keeping AC Temperature Too Low
When you keep your car’s AC on with a low temperature set in your air conditioning setting, the engine will take a lot of loads. While you would need to keep the AC set at a low temperature initially to gain a comfortable temperature, eventually, you should increase the temperature to minimize the extra load on the engine and improve fuel efficiency.
You can park your car in the shadow of a tree or underground parking lots to improve fuel economy. You can open windows initially to let the hot air go out of the car.
7. Bad Quality Fuel
When you fill-up fuel from an unknown petrol pump, chances are you would end up getting bad quality fuel. This might clog your filter. The vehicle’s fuel quality has to be good. Your fuel injectors and fuel pump might get affected by congestion in the fuel lines. Modern engines are allowing hybrid fuel consumption and even ethanol blend fuels.
These were the six bad habits that would kill your car mileage significantly. Avoid making these mistakes to improve your car’s fuel efficiency. If you want to drive your car longer, try to avoid such car mileage-killing mistakes and improve your fuel efficiency to save the planet and your bucks. These are the ways to get better fuel economy for your car and keep your car in good condition for a longer period.