How can you find out the fuel economy of a given car?

I always find:

I think they are a best avoided pile of poo, they should give 30 upwards to the gallon. Servicing costs are high, and not particularly easy to work on either.

mrcheerful

Whatever the fuel economy or maintenance costs are the purchase cost outweighs it in most cases.

In this case it sounds as if the car is free so just say yes and switch to that.

Alan

Yeah, but I want to do my bit to be 'green'...

cheers

it is not green at all. get a Toyota Prius 2 , that is very green indeed the government even admit it is a green car at 60 odd quid road tax, 66 mpg, 104 co emissions , and

mrcheerful

Most of the environmental impact is behind it. The huge amounts of electricity to create the aluminium; the oil for the plastics; the steel for the sheel. The best way to be green is to use an existing vehicle rather than be responsible for creating a new one. And if you can keep it going by using parts from a scrap yard (= parts recyling yard) so much the better.

I don't like the idea of those dual fuel ones! In slow moving traffic they are probably OK, but not when moving. When you put your foot down, then engine will start up and will immediately be at heavy load. The engine's will never be driven gently. As for the electrical part, it will eventually need to be charge by the engine anyway. For the price I think they are a bad idea!

In the case of the prius the engine starts almost as soon as you start moving, you can select electric only, but you won't get very far. The engine runs on an Atkinson cycle, so is only running nicely at set speeds, hence the cvt transmission.

The price is high, but what annoys me is that in the states they cost half of what we have to pay, at £20k for the top line one they are expensive, but if you could get one for the US £10k they would be a real bargain. Apparently Toyota sell all they can make at present anyway.

mrcheerful as you can guess I am thinking of getting one.

Yeah, there are several ways (asking in here is one, heh). You could talk to your Ford dealer too.

However, whilst a reference guide can tell you the official figures, it can't tell you what you what you'd get from it. That depends on how you drive it and over what distance.

If it's city running and you want to be green, get a push bike. :)

Anyway, the official combined cycle fuel consumption of the '94 1.6 Escort is just over 38 mpg. From personal experience of one of these, they have tall gearing and so can return mid 40s on a long run if you're prudent with the loud (cough) pedal, but in the city they're not very economical.

That's a difficult question to answer. Relative to your current vehicle, well again that depends on what you run. If you have a 1984 1.6 Escort, it's kinder to the trees on two accounts. One, it's more fuel efficient and two, it has a catalytic converter. But it's relative.

Engines are at their most efficient when under a heavy load.

Nope. When cold the donk is run continiously. When you're using the air conditioning, the donk is also run continiously.

They have their disadvantages. In the summer, if one is to use the air conditioning then some of their advantage is lost. However, on the motorway you're using a 1.0 litre petrol engine rather than a 1.6 petrol engine. In the city with the air conditioning switched off, it sips petrol.

Hi,

Thanks for the answer :)

Already got one, use it wherever possible, but I need a car for things like taking rubbish to the dump, and holiday use :)

Thanks

My current vehicle is a push bike, so im not looking to improve on that :)

Cool. I hope I didn't offend, but some British people want that 6.7 V8 quad-turbo six wheel drive just to drive the 400 yards to work... :)

We use ours for taking rubbish to the dump and holiday use too (road trip to Italy for this summer)...