With the rising price of gas, our local news program had a segment on saving gas. One suggestion was to clean out your trunk, since any additional weight decreases mileage.
Which got me thinking . . . doesn’t the added weight of the gas, itself, decrease mileage? Would there be a measurable increase in mileage if I never filled the tank more than half-way? Is there a formula for calculating the difference in mileage, based on the car’s (and my) weight, the capacity of the tank, and the weight of the gas?
I suppose it would save a tinnie, tiny bit of fuel to only fill up to half a tank. A gallon of gas weighs 5.8 to 6.5 lbs and a typical passenger vehicle fuel tank would be somewhere between 11 and 15 gallons.
If you fill up short of 7 gallons each time, then you would eliminate about 43 pounds. That is extremely small difference and certainly not worth it in the real world.
There are too many variables involved for me to know how to calculate how much fuel it takes to carry that extra 43 pounds if the tank is full.
If you’re expecting the price of gas to go up, it might be better to buy a full tank now at the cheap price instead of a half tank of cheap and a half tank of expensive later.
Of course, if you have an infallible way of predicting the future price of gasoline, you should probably play the gasoline futures market and laugh all the way to the bank…
This has been discussed here every couple of months for the last couple of years. The (long-winded) concensus is that the difference, if any, is below the noise threshold caused by how many bugs are stuck to your grill or which way the wind is blowing.
Not to mention the marginal extra consumption of pulling into your favorite station twice as often. It may only be 40 feet in and 40 feet out, but the weight-based savings are pretty miniscule too.
Also not having enough gas to get to a cheap station might cause you to have to buy gas from a expensive one. So you will save some gas but pay more for it.
I remember when my local channel ran a 6 minute segment within the nightly news on how I could protect my family from a terrorist attack with plastic and duct tape. These stories show the amount of time for news has expanded faster than news itself, so anything may be presented to fill the void.
I have the definitive answer on how to save money on gasoline. It seems so obvious to half of us, and the other half just dont seem to get it.
.
.
. dont buy a friggin SUV
There’s an even better way: don’t drive at all unless you have to. Live in a moderately urban area with ready access at home and work to public transportation, preferably which itself. The less you drive the less money you spend on gas.
There’s an even better way: don’t drive at all unless you have to. Live in a moderately urban area with ready access at home and work to public transportation, preferably which itself runs on a non-gasoline source of power. The less you drive the less money you spend on gas.
But at what point do you stop? When everyone is squeezing into Ford Kas?
I’m about to acquire a Ford Expedition. What I won’t save in gasoline I’ll save in beer by not having to buy it for SUV-owning friends for moving my stuff around, or renting the Home Depot truck, or purchasing a trailer and a bigger car capable of pulling one. All in all, gasoline is dirt cheap compared to the alternatives. Also, time is money, too, and many of the above options cost more in time than gasoline.
You stop when you get to a car size thats suitable for your purposes most of the time. If you frequently use a larger vehicle to go skiing in the wintertime, go jet skiing in the summer time, haul stuff around between multiple houses, and buy a large amount of refrigerators and lumber from home depot - then an SUV is great and I have no problem with that.
The issue I have with SUV’s are the owners who get them because they are convenient for going skiing that once or twice a season they actually head up into the mountains. So they spend thousands and thousands more initially for the bigger vehicle, more on maintenance because SUV parts are more expensive, more on gas because they get 10 miles per gallon just to have a little extra room in the vehicle on that 3 hour drive into New Hampshire.
If time is money, then money can be equated back to time, too. People get the big vehicles because they think it saves themselves time from having to rent a car on the few occasions they need a bigger vehicle. Yet they dont seem to realize the number of hours spent at work to obtain the extra money for that vehicle. Granted you are going to be spending that time at work anyway - but that time could be spent earning money to go toward something else besides the more expensive car. Money that could be spent on other things in their life that in the end, are probably worth more to them then the vehicle they drive. Maybe a vacation, maybe a repair to their home - whatever.
After all this, they then complain about the gas prices and do everything they can to save a buck here and there - yet they knew exactly what they were getting into when they bought the vehicle.
Just seems like a never ending cycle of hypocrisy to me.
Like I said - some people have a completely legit reason for having a bigger vehicle, and thats fine. My intention is not to argue with them or give them a hard time because I realize everyones needs are different. All I was trying to say in my original response was that it seems like most of the SUV owners out there complaining about gas prices are also the ones who have very little need for an SUV in the first place.
Although not my intention, after reading this over, it seems that maybe this reply should go into the pit - because I can see this turning into another war of words between the SUV and non-SUV people
Yeah…good luck to those who don’t live in the few cities that offer decent public transport. Try using public transportation[sic] in, say, Kansas City, Cleveland, or Milwaukee. You’re gonna be riding the bus…a nasty, stinking, lackadasical bus trip.
For those who live in a city where useful public transportation is a reality (Los Angeles is marginal, San Francisco good, Portland nearly ideal) it’s a choice, but it’s a logistical impossibility for the majority of the population. That being said, if your daily commute consists of 50+ miles alone in an Excursion, maybe you should think about buying a smaller car for your daily drive.
No, we don’t need to do that, and I’m being overly touchy, too. Not too long ago here there was an illiterate buttwipe that couldn’t understand that I wasn’t attacking him and his wife for owning SUV’s! Moved out of GQ, so I couldn’t follow up on it… we’re all still friends here, though.
It’s true that train service in Cleveland is sparse (though even at that, I was able to take the Rapid to high school, and my mom to work, for many years), but you can get anywhere at all by bus. And what’s wrong with busses? I’ve never found travelling by bus to be any more nasty or stinking than the same trip by car. Plus, you can read on the bus, or otherwise productively use your time instead of watching the road.
For that matter, I currently live in a city with no public transportation at all, and I still don’t need a car. I bike everywhere I need to go. And even if you absolutely need a car for some travel (say, if you have a long commute to work, and the busses don’t run to your neighborhood), you still don’t need it for everything, and can probably run many of your errands on foot or bicycle.
Back to the OP though, and the idea of driving around with half a tank instead of a full tank -
I think the fact that you would be going out of your way that much more to get gas if you only filled up halfway, plus the time involved in doing so, is sufficient reason to keep 'er filled up rather then running half empty all the time.
A few years ago I had the… ahem… pleasure of driving back to Boston from Cleveland because some idiots played flight simulator a little too much. Anyway, I happened to be renting a Metro on that particular trip, and as much as I jumped up and down on the gas peddle, I couldn’t get over 65. Plus, the thing barely had a 6 gallon tank because I was having to stop every 150 miles to fill up. It was kinda funny filling out the expense sheet because I had about 6 gas receipts that told where I was at what time as I drive all through the night to get home.
Anyhow - the whole point of that story is that just the thoughts of ‘oh man I have to get gas AGAIN?’ and ‘I hope I have enough to make it 30 miles to the next gas station’ is enough for me to keep from filling up halfway to save a little bit of gas.
Although to be technically picky, I’m sure there is some gas savings because of the lighter load, but I agree with a previous poster who said that the concensus of another similar thread is that its just not worth it for most people
True, and from time to time I take the Metrorail line from Pas to LAX for this reason, even though it is a two hour ride. ($1.50 versus $25 for the SuperShuttle…If I’m not in a hurry it’s a good deal.) But the bus…eh, only if I have to.
Well, last time I drove through Bozeman, I pulled the bike of the rack and rode around; it is a rather pleasant little town to tool about; the operative word here, though, is little, with no heavy traffic to contend with. And while I chose my current residence 'cause it’s damn near the only place in SunSoCal that’s amenible to walking around instead of drive-and-park (and people here still think I’m crazy for walking a half-mile to Old Town), it wouldn’t be viable to partake in many activities (mountain biking, diving, kayaking, hauling IKEA purchases for other people) without frequently using a car. Riding a bike about Pasadena seems to be inviting atavistic agression from drivers; strange, as I used to ride my bike around Milwaukee all the time, virtually without incident. (It didn’t hurt that Milwaukee, although lacking any kind of rail system, does have a fairly decent bike trail on the East Side. Pasadena has bizarrely terminating “bike lanes” which seem to function more as curb parking than anything.)
I agree that using public transport is generally more efficient (both for the user and the ecosystem) and where the infrastructure is available I applaud people for doing so, but I do get a little tired of people who live in DC or along the SF Corridor lambasting others for not “making use” of public transportation that either doesn’t exist or is seriously inconvenient and unpleasent.
And here my know-it-all kid has been telling me to fuel up because the pressure of the full tank makes the engine run more efficiently. According to him, I should never let the tank get below half because the first half of the tank is that much more efficient.
My dad used to have the same rule, but because there might be an emergency and you don’t want to have to stop on the way to the hospital to get gas.
Your fuel pump is what generates pressure in the fuel line, and the amount of fuel that is actually sprayed into the cylinder is controlled by the carbourator or (on most modern automotive engines) the fuel injectors. The feed for the fuel line is in the lowest position in the tank and there is usually a filter between the tank and the line. The level of fuel in the tank has absolutely no bearing in how much or how fast fuel enters the engine, unless it is completely empty, in which case, well, it’ll be pretty obvious how inefficient an engine is when it has no fuel to burn.
It is a good idea not to empty the tank, and not only for your father’s (emminantly sensible) reason, but because letting the tank run nearly dry concentrates whatever contamination may be in the tank and will cause it to suck into the filter all at once. Also, a nearly empty tank is more likely to suck in the outside air while filling and condense water in the fuel. It’s no big deal in general but it is good practice to keep the tank at least a quarter full or better.
Tell the kid he owes you a six-pack for misinforming you. Actually, tell him he owes it to me. I like Hoegaarden
