Drive smarter, save money. Plus: Eco-rally driving?!?
Take driving tips from your nanna to save money on fuel, and you might even win a rally. Vincent Heeringa proves the the tortoise really can beat the hare
The Dutch are notorious scrooges. My father tells a story of an uncle who once went into a petrol station and asked how much it cost for a drop of gas. “Aw, nothing, I guess,” said the attendant.
“Okay then, fill it up with drips!”
I figured my heritage would give me a head start in the AA Energywise Rally, a 1,626-kilometre ‘race’ to find the most fuel-efficient vehicles in the land. I was invited to drive a BMW 320 diesel, with a factory efficiency target of 5.9 litres per 100 kilometres. Pfiff, I thought. I can get more mileage out of a banana cake.
The rally participants are deadly serious. My suggestion—“Can we let their tyres down overnight?”— is met with blank stares.
The 60 participants represent the best and brightest of auto technology and the results are keenly sought after, because the stakes are increasingly high. Climate change, high petrol prices and a recession are the perfect storm for a nation that spends more on powering its cars ($67 per week) than its homes ($32).
And here are some more facts:
- The transport sector is responsible for 45 percent of our energy-related greenhouse gas emissions.
- The average car in New Zealand emits 3.28 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.
- If every New Zealand motorist used 10 percent less fuel through efficient driving practices, it would be like taking over 250,000 vehicles off the road.
That last statistic stays with me as we inch our way, grandma-like, into the Auckland traffic one cold Monday in November. The key to fuel-efficient driving, it seems, lies in the acceleration. Or to be more precise, the lack of it. That and anticipation. In gridlocked city traffic, the constant starting and stopping eats up efficiency. After just five kilometres we are doing a horrendous 8.3 litres per 100 kilometres.
Mind you, that’s better than my own Chrysler family wagon. Even on a downhill open road it clocks in at something like 100 litres for half a kilometre. I forget the exact numbers.
Most of the cars in New Zealand are more than 12 years old, with an efficiency of 10.2 litres per 100 kilometres, so the AA Energywise Rally is important not just for testing the actual autos (see table, page 70) but also for the awareness it raises about ‘hypermiling’: the act of driving below the standardised fuel-efficiency targets.
Fans of TV programme Top Gear will understand the importance of how you drive, from the episode in which Jeremy Clarkson hounds a Toyota Prius around the race track in a BMW M3—and scores better fuel efficiency. The test is bollocks, given that your average trip to school or work is not a race. As Rod Oram wrote in issue three of Good (good.net.nz/topgear), in real-world conditions it still matters what you drive.
But hypermiling does actually work. By the time we reach the open road, our efficiency is rising fast. We’re averaging 4.5 litres per 100 kilometres, an impressive 25 percent better than the target. At one stage we get down to an even more impressive 4.3, and finish the rally on 4.77 (second in our class for fuel use!).
The winning driver, in a beasty Holden ute, is almost 45 percent below target. EECA says that for the average car, a 20 percent reduction off the rated figure creates a saving of nearly $400 a year at current petrol prices (assuming petrol is $1.50 per litre, your car gets 10.2 litres per 100 kilometres, and you travel 12,600 kilometres a year).
If nothing else, the rally proves that your grandmother was right about one thing: driving like Jeremy Clarkson makes you stupid.
