Myth busting

[Théière]

Car fuel economy and myth busting, worth a read.

Here

[PaulT]

Definitely worth a read. I am always keen not to use the roofbox on our trips down to SW France fearing the impact on MPG but normally have to use it. From those results now quite happy to se the box and have less in the car.

[halfblind]

The comments after the article seemed to be in the main negative about the conclusions and the methodology.

So nothing new there then ;-)

[AnOther]

I'm confused, does anything in that piece actually come as a surprise to anybody ?

Compromised aerodynamics

Air con

Extra weight

Harsh driving

Surely anybody who drives a car knows that those things will be detrimental to fuel economy to one extent or another !

FWIW anybody who can only eke a miserable 30.5mpg out of a fairly small 1.9 DTI needs to seriously address their driving technique, even 45mpg is nothing to shout about.

My somewhat larger Skoda 1.9tdi returns a consistent long term average of nearly 52mpg and I don't dawdle around in it either.

Even storming up the motorway at 130kph two up and loaded for a trip it returns the best part of 40mpg.

[Gardengirl]

Not a great surprise at all, but most of it obviously doesn't put off any of those who stormed past us heading south over the weekend when we were doing about 130. Our Prius showed 49.6 mpg south of England to south of France, and that was with E10 in the tank when we filled uop, which doesn't help.

[Théière]

[quote user="AnOther"]I'm confused, does anything in that piece actually come as a surprise to anybody ?

Compromised aerodynamics

Air con

Extra weight

Harsh driving

Surely anybody who drives a car knows that those things will be detrimental to fuel economy to one extent or another !

FWIW anybody who can only eke a miserable 30.5mpg out of a fairly small 1.9 DTI needs to seriously address their driving technique, even 45mpg is nothing to shout about.

My somewhat larger Skoda 1.9tdi returns a consistent long term average of nearly 52mpg and I don't dawdle around in it either.

Even storming up the motorway at 130kph two up and loaded for a trip it returns the best part of 40mpg.

[/quote]

I am not sure it's news but it's interesting to see to what degree they think different items cause the increase in consumption.  After all how many years have car manufacturers finished the back ends of the cars off with a rear valence which is in effect an air scoop of a bucket design and sure to use way more fuel than it ever needed to, much nicer with the double diffuser looking affairs we see now, all that thanks to F1.