While carmakers have made huge leaps in terms of fuel-saving technologies, these advancements are nullified by a lack of knowledge of how to use them from most drivers.
As a result, AA DriveTech course centers around three simple pieces of advice, which should be easy to apply and effective in improving fuel consumption:
- If your vehicle doesn’t have ‘Stop/Start’ technology, deploy your own version. By looking well ahead in traffic or at lights you should be able to judge if you’re going to be stopped for more than 30 seconds. If you are, switch off. Modern starters, batteries and charging systems are quite able to cope with this regime once they are at running temperature.
- Find out where the engine’s ‘sweet spot’ is (usually the point at which peak torque is being produced) and change up at that point. When overtaking, select a gear that enables you to use that ‘sweet spot’ to best (and most efficient) advantage.
- ‘Block change’ up the gearbox (1 st , 3 rd , 6 th ) when circumstances allow, back off the throttle as much as you can to use the vehicle’s existing momentum to carry it forward, only use the brakes to slow down and don’t exceed the speed limit.
AA DriveTech’s Fleet Director Paul Holmes puts things into perspective: “If you compare the cost of fuelling a 100 vehicle fleet between now and this time last year you could be looking at £365,454 now as opposed to £289,090 [100 vehicles @ 33mpg average; 20K miles p.a.; fuel @ £1.05 per liter/£4.78 per gallon]. That’s a staggering 26% increase!"
“If all those drivers completed a Fuel Save 15 course and continued to apply those techniques during every trip you could expect to claw back well over £50,000 worth of fuel cost. You have to sell a lot of products or services to generate profit of that magnitude,” he adds.
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