How To Save Money On Fuel

Gas prices have now become a hot matter compared to more than ten years ago and several oil companies have been scrutinized for charging motorists with what seems to be unfair gas prices.  What’s more, the consequence of these high prices of fuel products have affected economies all over the world and caused lots of people to lose their jobs.

Because of the high price of gas, cutting back on fuel as we can is now on everybody’s minds.  Using up lesser fuel will also be good to our finances and the atmosphere. 

So what can we, as consumers, do to save as much petrol as we can?  There are a lot of measures we can work out to save gas.  We just need to be shrewd with how and when we use it and be aware.

Drive less.

The very first way to save cash on gas is to keep our cars in our garage more often.  If you live in an area where there is an efficient public transport system, you can save yourself the trouble of having to pay out big amounts of cash for one or two week worth of gas. 

Car-pooling will be another way to cut back on gas and each one of you who gets to ride in that car can just give a modest fund to the one who owns the car. 

Car Driving and Maintenance

One way of saving fuel is to drive efficiently and properly care for your car.

For manual transmission cars, saving gas means proper gear-shifting when required.  The lower the gear, the higher the gas consumption of the engine.  Timing is the key to achieve proper shifts to the transmission and for the carburetor or EFI to use just the right amount of fuel it needs to produce power. 

Letting go of the gas pedal during downhill also helps to save gas.  It won’t just emit a lesser amount of exhaust, but you’ll also save on fuel.

Tires on your car should have the correct air pressure.  Tires with low air pressure will definitely bring down your car’s velocity and will waste more fuel in its overall course.  Tire’s that are over-inflated will increase the risk of being punctured and will also affect your car’s speed.  You can always read your car manual if you don’t know what is the best air pressure for your tire. 

Filling your car at the pump

Gasoline with high octane rating is not always the best choice.  In fact, damage to your car’s engine and other components is probable when using high-octane fuel as carbon deposits could accumulate in your car’s engine as not all of it is completely burned as opposed to regular gasoline. 

The only exception is that if for years your car has been using high octane fuel and switching to regular in an instant could affect some of your car’s components. 

E10, E20 and E80 are new forms of gasoline mixed with ethanol.  Ethanol-mixed fuels are cheaper than pure gasoline and less toxic.  However, not all gas combined with ethanol are compatible with every car.   Older car models especially ones that still use carburetor are not recommended to use fuel mixed with ethanol as these could eat away the car’s fuel lines which will hurt your pockets to have it serviced and eliminate the idea on saving money on petrol.