Quote:
Originally Posted by glatt
Running an air conditioner will use up fuel. Maybe not a lot, but don't misread the article. It's simple physics. If you ask the engine to do more work, it will take more fuel to do that work.
If I'm sitting at a red light in neutral, and I turn on the air conditioner, I can hear the engine increase its idle speed as the AC compressor turns on. The article talks about a test done at highway speed comparing having the windows open to having the A/C on. They did not compare all the other various driving situations. The amount may be negligible, but it absolutely uses more gas to run the A/C.
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Glatt - You're right. I've measured gas consumption due to AC in the Insight at 0.13 gallon/hour. This should be fairly constant whenever the compressor is running. I've measured fuel consumption in the Insight at idle, without AC, to be about 0.1 gallon/hour, so this is a significant increase.
An SUV getting 20 mpg at 60 mph would use 3 gallon/hr, and if the AC was using an additional 0.2 gph the mileage would drop to about 19 mpg - which would be difficult to measure without some added instrumentation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shawnee123
Cool, do you need my shipping address so you can have your dealership deliver it to me? Thanks, man!  |
Unfortunately, they stopped making the Insight a few months ago (that wasn't very good timing, was it?). I could probably sell mine for what I paid for it in 2003.