South African motorists have been warned that petrol could cost as much as R5 a litre. Here are a few (sneaky) ways to modify your gas-guzzling habits:
Harness the power of gravity: ”No,” says Susie Hayward at the United Kingdom’s RAC Motoring Services, disapprovingly, when confronted with this popular method for improving fuel efficiency. ”Turning off the engine when you’re coming down hills is illegal. You lose control of your vehicle, and, as the driver, it’s your duty to be in control of your vehicle.”
Even coasting down slopes in neutral is condemned by most motoring authorities around the world — but not by racing legend Stirling Moss, who admits to saving petrol this way when using his London runaround, a three-wheeled Honda Gyro Canopy scooter he says makes him look like a takeaway delivery driver.
”A lot of people say you shouldn’t,” he concedes, although he rejects the RAC’s argument that coasting means you risk losing control and crashing.
”Frankly,” he explains, with rather more forbearance than anyone has a right to expect when making insinuations to Moss about his driving skills, ”I don’t lose control.”
Slipstream: another tempting option turns out to be deeply unpopular with po-faced road-safety advocates. ”I did a race in Argentina,” Moss recalls, ”where it was essential that I didn’t stop for fuel, but I knew the others would, so I got in the slipstream of the other drivers.” Even today, on his Gyro Canopy scooter, he says, ”I sometimes get sucked along by a bus.”
Soup up your vehicle: spoilers — the wing-shaped fins affixed to the back of every self-respecting boy-racer’s motor — seem like a good way of improving kilometres to the litre.
”But homemade ones, and most of the ones you just bolt on the back could actually increase drag,” says Martin Passmore who, given his name, ought to, for comedy purposes, be a driving instructor but is, in fact, an expert in ground-vehicle aerodynamics at Loughborough University in the UK. Also, he says, ”wind up your windows. Two open front windows could increase drag significantly. And a bad roof rack could increase it by 20%.”
The RAC, risking the outrage of football fans, even suggests that poles attached to cars flying club or country flags might cause fuel-wasting drag.
”If we set that up in our wind tunnel here,” says Passmore, ”it would certainly create enough drag to be measurable.” Another thought: go-faster stripes. ”No,” says Passmore.
Shorten your journey where possible.
Drive over roundabouts (check local highway laws first).
Run your car on vegetable oil: contrary to popular belief, this isn’t illegal, as long as you pay the appropriate taxes. ”There were reports about the police chasing people in South Wales, but no one ever got arrested,” says Marc Thomas, finance director of Bio-Power, which markets a fuel based on used vegetable oil collected from catering establishments, currently retailing at 75p (about R8) a litre.
For some vegetable-fuel mixes, it isn’t even necessary to convert your car, and you get to feel smug not only environmentally but also politically.
”The fact that we’re in Iraq now,” Thomas argues, ”is largely down to the fact that it’s one of the world’s last major non-producing reserves of oil, and the United States is worried about stability in Saudi Arabia, so they want a military presence in the region. If we all used vegetable oil, we wouldn’t need to be there.”
Drive barefoot: ”You should think of pressing the accelerator as creating energy by burning petrol, and depressing the brake as destroying energy,” says Quentin Willson, British broadcaster and also motoring writer of the year. ”All the on-that-right-pedal has to be gentle. So do it with your bare feet. ”Take your shoes off and your sensitivity will be much, much greater. I know I’ll be lambasted by every road-safety organisation in the world, but it does work. And don’t have a convertible. It’s the aerodynamic equivalent of [London’s] Albert Hall.”
Siphon someone else’s petrol: in many parts of the world, stealing things is frowned upon by the police. So in this case, in addition to a length of rubber tubing, you’ll need a generous friend willing to make a gift of some of his or her petrol. ”The nozzle that the petrol’s coming out of has to be lower than the tank you’re taking it from,” explains one engineer, taking refuge in anonymity. ”Then you suck to get it flowing.”
Cover the end with your thumb, then insert the tube into your own car. The physics of this is simple, but the chemistry of it, it turns out, is actually quite alarming. Petrol should never be ingested, and a recent paper in the British Medical Journal linked siphoning by mouth to increased rates of blood cancers among garage mechanics. On balance, therefore, this should be avoided.
Hail a bus instead: this action is best undertaken with the palm held flat, parallel to the side of the body, in order to minimise the drag coefficient on the upswing. — Â