Tip 4: Maintain your Car
When most of us think about a fuel efficient car we usually only consider the advertised mileage that each vehicle type offers. While this is important you have to keep in mind that if you don't make sure that your vehicle is properly maintained it won't matter how good the advertised mileage is because you will never achieve it. A poorly maintained car will use far more gas than it would if your car was running properly so regular tune-ups can go a long way to reducing the amount of fuel that you use.
The biggest factor when it comes to keeping your car running at maximum fuel efficiency is to make sure that you keep the engine properly maintained. A serious engine maintenance problem can seriously impact your fuel mileage and needs to be corrected immediately. Even a small problem can have an impact on your cars fuel efficiency so it is a good idea to have your car tuned up on a regular basis. A lot of people don't properly maintain their car because they don't want to spend the money; this is almost always false economy since they will almost certainly end up spending more on fuel than they would to get the engine maintained.
Most people are driving on tires that are not properly inflated and that will impact on their fuel efficiency by more than they would think. A properly inflated tire will roll more easily than a tire that is under inflated and that will reduce the amount of gas that you need to use when driving. When buying a used car, inflating the tires is one of the main things you should do right away to improve its mileage. It may seem that the obvious way to increase your mileage even further would be to over inflate your tire but this isn't really a good idea, there are safety issues involved in doing so. Most people don't even worry about making sure that there tires are properly inflated they just fill them until it feels about right. This rarely produces the proper results. It is a good idea to get a tire pressure gauge and make sure that your tires are inflated to the recommended pressure.
One potential area of fuel saving that most people never think about is the motor oil you are using. Motor oil keeps your engine lubricated and reduces friction between the moving parts, using the correct grade of motor oil will help to make sure that your engine is properly lubricated and runs at maximum efficiency. There are now motor oils on the market that are labelled as energy conserving; these contain special ingredients that will help reduce the friction in your engine even further. Admittedly the savings of using the proper motor oil are fairly small but they do add up and it really doesn't cost you anything in terms of money or effort to make sure that you are using the correct grade of motor oil.