How to get more MPG

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02GF74

Über Member
More worrying is the often forgotten cost of depreciation- all to often people are begrudging 2/3p per litre increase at the pump but their brand whatever sits there loosing heaps of money (up to £50 a day for some top exec cars) even when they're not in use.

car depreciation is something that I cannot get my head round.:sad:

I paid £ 13 k for my car 14 years ago, which was 1/2 price. When I last went on "we buy any car for peanuts dot com", they offered about £ 350 for it, and that is before the £ 75 admin fee!! :cursing: I mean, it is worth at least £ 80 will a full tank of pertrol. For what wbac.com are offering, I couldn't even buy a set of tyres let alone another car that does what mine does.

Anyway back to the depreciation part - apart from the heated seats not working and a few blemishes to the interior and exterior paint (oh yeah, the pneumatic struts for the tailgate don't work but nothing that can't be fixed by propping it up with a stick), it does exactly the same as the equivalent brand new model that probably costs £ 30k!!! It may not be as fuel efficient as technology has improved but if i were to get a new car, i'd probably have to drive the equivalent to the moon and back 10 times before I start to save money. I can live with the stigma of having an M plate.
 

GrasB

Veteran
Location
Nr Cambridge
Going back to mpg.

How do you accelerate for best economy? It depends on an awful lot on the car you drive & your change points but this is modelled fuel economy for 1 mile after exiting a 30mph limit into an NSL (such as when leaving a village) based on my Alfa:

Code:
Throttle   mpg
  20%     38.53
  30%     39.61
  40%     41.19
  50%     47.88
  60%     48.33
  70%     47.29 
  80%     45.42
  90%     42.51
  100%    39.37

Er what?.. so gently drifting up to 60 mph uses more fuel than flooring it? Yes, for this car. At 100% throttle it spends very little time/distance drinking fuel in the single figure mpg band and spends almost all of the 1 mile in a very frugal cruise state. The big jump in fuel economy between 40% & 50% throttle is due to the main turbo joining the party & dramatically reducing the duration, both in distance & time, of the acceleration stage with a relatively small increase in fuel usage. This is the nature of that engine & cars performance envelope. An ecobox would most likely have a totally different throttle/economy profile under the same conditions.
 

MarkF

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
If I had an economical car, I am sure I'd use it a lot. However I have a car that does 15 mpg, I like it and it's extremely economical because I avoid using it unless it's absolutely necessary. :smile:
 

Electric_Andy

Heavy Metal Fan
Location
Plymouth
Driving style is often to blame for lower MPG. Some research conducted in the Netherlands found that if every car driver accelerated and decelerated less abruptly and looked ahead more, it eased congestion and made for a more consistent average speed, and decreased fuel consumption as a result.

My beef with modern car ads is that they claim "up to 75mpg" for example, but this is tested under factory conditions. In the real world (with hills, stop-go traffic, head winds etc) MSN motors tested some and could not even get within 30% of the claimed MPG.
 

MarkF

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
What car have you got?

4.0 Jeep Cherokee 1998. It's an extremely useful utility vehicle, I've had it 3 years or so, it's cost me nothing but oil & petrol and has lost maybe £200 in value. It sound daft but it is an extremely economical car to own. Forget 50mpg, make all cars do 15 mpg and people would soon be cycling to work!
 
Just thinking about this. When a new car is bought the buyer is accepting it will drop £5000 to £50,0000 in the next few years so is perhaps not to picky about £1000 one way or the other on fuel. While MPG is probably a factor it is a bit lower on the list.

Five years down the line, someone is looking to buy the same car for £5000 and get 10 years out of it and so budgets it losing £500 per year in value, so the major cost of car ownership then becomes fuel and putting in £2000 worth or £3000 worth is a huge difference.
 

ComedyPilot

Secret Lemonade Drinker
Buy an efficient car, and use it less, and car share more
 
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