How Can You Save 20% Off Your Diesel Costs?

OK so Diesel in the UK is pretty much well at the highest cost it has ever been. Seems to hover around the 139 - 140 pence per liter where I fill up. That equates to about $2.20 a liter in US dollars and (this is where I would usually make a joke about the Australian Peso. Unfortunately the Australian Peso has soared ahead against the UK pound, making working for pounds effectively meaningless ;-) ) roughly $2.15 AUD. So quite a bit per liter.

I have to drive to work. Well that is not entirely true. I could get public transport which would take 90 minutes at minimum each way, or drive which takes 30 minutes of a morning and about 45 on the way home. It's a no brainer, I drive. Guess I could get a job that was accessible by public transport or move to Hatfield. The latter is not an option ;-).

So due to diesel costs driving is seriously costing a fortune. It's basically £70 a tank, give or take, to fill a VW Golf. Yes a hatchback. Cripes knows what it costs to fill a real car! So to cut down on driving costs I decided to drive incredibly conservatively, e.g. like a big girls blouse ;-), to see what the difference in fuel consumption would be.

Conservative driving for me means:

• driving the speed limit or just under
• keeping the engine revs incredibly low. I try not to rev the engine what so ever and change gears incredibly early. Basically until I reach higher gears the engine barely gets above 1000 RPM
• thats it.

This doesn't really significantly increase driving time so much. Sure it does a little but in the overall scheme of things do you really need to rush to work? Yeah rushing home sure but the other way ;-). However in a one tank test it has dramatically decreased fuel consumption. Or should that be increased? Not sure ;-). What I mean is that I get more MPG and therefore spend less. Got that?

So since having my car I have averaged about 45 MPG. Not to shabby from a combination of both urban and rural driving. Not exactly what the VW Golf TDI 1.9 spec claims but all in all not too shabby. This past tank however, with the conservative driving approach adopted above, I averaged 55 MPG. Thats a 22% increase in MPG.

OK its a one tank test, but that tank did cover both rural and urban driving as I pretty much well always do. It's not quite a scientific study yet, but it clearly demonstrates that conservative driving will save you a bomb. For simplicity lets say I am 20% better off. Thats roughly £14 per tank thank you very much. With this kind of saving I could almost afford to take up smoking! ;-)

Anyways, if your car fuel bills are soaring, it might just be worth chilling out behind the wheel. You will still get to where you are going and you will probably be richer off karmically as well. It's difficult to get road raged up if you hover at the speed limit. Try it out, it's guaranteed to make you feel better! ;-)

Cheers

m