Don’t just boycott, take real action for change
As you may have heard, today, May 15th is the national gas boycott day. It’s a great attention ploy and maybe even an interesting symbol of protest. But in the end, all it will do is defer sales until later in the week.
What’s required to really move prices? A change in behavior. If each driver in the US would do the following things over the next year, it could reduce fuel demand by as much as 10%.
The easiest actions you can take to increase your fuel efficiency by 10%:
- Drive the speed limit, the faster you go, the more fuel you burn (and your ticket risk goes down) this yields around 5% fuel efficiency
- Remove unnecessary items from your car, each 100 lbs of weight removed can add up to 2% fuel efficiency
- Don’t idle your car unnecesarily, for any delay longer than a stop light, switch the ignition off
- Whenever you make a trip, combine multiple segments into one eliminating the need for mulitple trips
- Take it easy, hot rod starts and fast braking can decrease fuel efficiency by as much as 33%.
Easy suggestions to increase your fuel efficiency by 10%
- Make sure your tires are properly inflated, wheels balanced, and aligned this will yield around 3% fuel efficiency
- Ensure your car has a clean air filter which could yield up to 5% fuel efficiency
- Keep your car “tuned up” which will yield up to 4% fuel efficiency
- Use the right grade of motor oil, this will yield up to 2% fuel efficiency
More suggestions to increase your fuel efficiency by 10%
- If you must commute, carpool or take public transport
- Buy a more fuel efficient car, a 10mpg difference could save as much as $3,000 per year in fuel
- Avoid “rush hour” travel
- Telecommute to work
Obviously, these suggestions range in cost and effort from essentially zero (change your driving behavior and remove excess weight) to very expensive (buy a more fuel efficient car.) We publish all of them so you can select the actions you want to take to actually change the fuel comsumption over time rather than simply boycotting gas purchase for a day. Not everyone can do everything on this list, but everyone can do some combination of these items to total a 10% reduction. Let’s focus our effort on these pragmatic actions and we’ll see an impact on the price of gas, save yourself money, and oh by the way, we’ll reduce our greenhouse emissions as a bonus.
