Gas prices

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by HLJ

I thought the best way to save gas (besides riding your bike) is to get one of these.

Cool, do you need my shipping address so you can have your dealership deliver it to me? Thanks, man!

[HungLikeJesus]

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.

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.

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.

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by HLJ

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.

Bummer. I'll take a Prius, then.

Seriously, I do look forward to getting a fuel efficient car in the future.