Eco-Driving Tips and Tricks
So, it turns out that having a Ford vehicle (Escape hybrid) entitles us to receive the Ford Magazine. As you might expect, the “magazine” is basically a blatant extended advertisement. However, surprisingly, it did have interesting news on their cars (the new Flex, a new plug-in Escape), some fun facts on eco-driving, as well info on a new site they’ve developed called Driving Skills for Life. Wonder if they got the idea for combining self-promotion with useful information from Costco Connection? Costco’s got the whole self-promotion-disguised-as-interesting-articles thing down to a science.
Anyway, let’s start with the eco-driving facts. They really did a good job of pulling together some interesting stats:
- Older, poorly maintained vehicles make up only 10% of the vehicles in the US but account for 90% of all emissions!
- At speeds exceeding 40 mph, the drag caused by open windows consumes more fuel than using the vehicle’s air conditioning.
- Approximately 50% of the energy required to operate at highway speeds is devoted to overcoming wind resistance. (So why don’t Ferraris get better gas mileage??)
- Idling for more than 30 seconds uses more fuel than restarting the engine.
- In city driving, acceleration accounts for nearly 50% of a vehicle’s energy consumption.
- When compared to Eco-driving behaviors, depending upon the vehicle being driven, aggressive drivers can produce as much as:
- 7% more CO2 emissions
- 26% more NOx emissions
- 8 times more CO emissions
- Gas mileage drops by about 1% for every pound of tire pressure below the recommended level. Keep your tires properly inflated!
- Driving a vehicle at 65 mph consumes roughly 15% more fuel than driving at 55mph.
- Today’s engines don’t require lengthy warm-up before driving, even in cold weather.
- A properly tuned vehicle may consume about 20% less fuel and produce fewer emissions.
As for new things to expect with Ford’s cars:
- The plug-in Escape sounds promising. For 7 hours of charging time you get to travel 30-40 miles on electric power. The charge time may sound a bit excessive but the very cool part is that if you need to go further than your alloted 30-40 miles, the gas engine will kick in and the vehicle switches to standard Ford Escape Hybrid mode.
- For the new Ford Flex (pictures above), Ford is finally unveiling a car that appears to be designed some time within the past 20 years. I especially like the humongous amount of cargo space that can be available as well as the giant sunroof for the back-seat dwellers. Really, the biggest issue I see with the Flex is the fact that it is essentially a car/wagon that gets SUV-like mileage. Obviously designed pre-$120+ per gallon oil, the Flex gets a measly 17 mpg in the city and 24 mpg on the highway. Too bad Ford didn’t have the foresight to make the Flex their second hybrid. THAT would have been something to blog about!
And lastly, with regard to Ford’s hyped new site called Driving Skills for Life, I did a 25 minute tour of the eco area under the Students section. It was torture. Don’t waste your time. Anything you can learn during that waste of internet electrons is available in their handy-dandy list that is provided at the beginning of this post. To be fair, the Student section does seem to provide some good tips for beginner drivers. So don’t be afraid - go ahead and explore the site, just avoid the eco section.
Tags: Eco-driving, ecodriving, emissions, escape hybrid, flex, ford, ford flex, plug-in