How to Find Out Your Car’s Fuel Economy Ratings
When you are looking for a car, you want to determine whether the vehicle’s fuel economy is as it should be, whether it is new or used. So where do you start?
Since the US government requires every vehicle to have information about its fuel economy, finding it in a variety of ways isn’t difficult. Here are some quick and easy ways to find out your car’s fuel economy, calculate it yourself and improve it.
Monroney sticker
When browsing a dealership for a new or used car, one of the details you notice when you study the Monroney sticker is that it lists the vehicle’s fuel economy in the EPA section. The label includes three fuel economy numbers, highway, city, and combined miles per gallon.
Edmund’s car reviews
From Edmunds car reviews, select a vehicle and go to the features page for that car. There you can see statistics such as transmission, drive type, seating capacity, engine specifications and fuel consumption. It lists fuel type for vehicle requirements, EPA city, highway, and combined miles per gallon, range in miles for city and highway, and fuel tank capacity.
Government fuel economy website
The government’s fuel economy website has everything you could ever want to know about the fuel economy of a wide range of vehicles. You can also search for specific vehicles. It has a trip calculator, tips to drive more efficiently and more.
It is important to remember that the figures provided by the government on fuel economy are not always accurate, but are best-case scenario figures as the tests are conducted in labs rather than real-world conditions.
How to calculate your fuel consumption
The next time you fill up your car, write down the mileage on your odometer and the date you filled up your tank. The next step is to drive as usual until you reach a point where you have a quarter of a tank of gas in your vehicle. Most calculations are based on running your vehicle almost empty, but you never know where you’ll be and how long you’ll be waiting when you fill up.
When your tank is a quarter full, record the date and miles on the odometer when you fill up your tank. As you fill up your tank, check how many gallons you added. If you have a gas tank that holds 20 gallons and you drove until it was a quarter full, then you probably used 15 gallons of gas, but the gas pump will tell you how much you did. Take the kilometers driven and divide the number of gallons added to get your miles per gallon.
This is how you improve your fuel consumption
According to the government site Fuel Economy, there are a few ways to improve your vehicle’s fuel economy. These methods include:
- Check tire alignment – misaligned tires reduce fuel efficiency by up to 10%
- Check tire pressure – Under-inflated tires reduce fuel consumption
- Fill up your tank in the morning or late at night
- Drive sensibly
- If possible, use cruise control
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