Saving Fuel

Tips for Fuel Savings

Drive Sensibly

Aggressive driving  wastes fuel.  If you're driving aggressively, you may well be applying the accelerator more rapidly than your car can deliver fuel into the engine, or more rapidly than the engine can burn the fuel efficiently for your current speed, so fuel gets wasted and even unburnt fuel can be discharged in your exhaust.   

Driving sensibly also makes your travelling safer for you and others, so you may save more than fuel money.

Observe the Speed Limit

Fuel consumption generally increases substantially as you travel further above 90 km/h. Even though different vehciles have different speeds, or ranges of speed, for optimal fuel efficiency, fuel efficiency usually falls away rapidly at speeds in excess of 90 km/h.

Of course, observing the speed limit also contributes to safer driving.

Remove Excess Weight

While this tip may tempt you to leave some of your passengers by the roadside, this tip is more about removing unnecessary items in your vehicle, especially heavy items. An extra 50 kg in your vehicle could reduce your fuel efficiency by up to 2%. The reduction in fuel efficiency caused by heavy items is based on the percentage of extra weight relative to the vehicle's weight and affects lighter vehicles even more than heavier ones.

Avoid Excessive Idling

Idling gets 0 km per litre of fuel used.  Although idling your car to warm up on cold mornings before putting strain on the engine may be a good idea, leaving your engine running when your vehicle is stopped uses fuel.  Generally, vehicles with larger capacity engines waste more fuel at idle than vehicles with smaller capacity engines.

Use Your Cruise Control

By activating your cruise control for highway driving, you not only maintain a constant speed but, in most cases, also save fuel.

Use Overdrive

When you use overdrive gearing, it reduces your vehicle's engine speed, which reduces your fuel consumption.  Some of our vehicles have a button for engaging overdrive.  This is to activate the lock-up torque converter which further enhances fuel economy.  We recommend engaging overdrive at highway speeds and disengaging it as you slow down for town driving.  This saves fuel.