Gas-Saving Gimmicks
Posted on 27. Jun, 2008 by Anna in Gas Saving Tips, Hypermiling
Gas Prices Rise and “Wanna-Be” Hypermilers Fall Prey To Gas-Saving Gimmicks
The cost of gas in the United States, traditionally priced very low compared to the rest of the world, have been rising for the last two years. Market forecasts say they won’t be going down anytime soon — if ever.
With record-high gasoline prices looming as a permanent part of the future, people everywhere are looking for ways to make their vehicles more fuel-efficient.
Some are trading in their gas-guzzling SUV’s for eco-friendly hybrid cars.
Others are becoming hypermilers, the new class of road warrior that competes to squeeze the very highest mile-per-gallon out of every little drop of fuel their cars consume.
The media has focused a great deal of attention on hypermiling drivers who claim they were able to boost the average miles-per-gallon of their Honda or Civic from 27 to a more budget-friendly 40 mpg through the use of a few simple tactics.
All this talk of using tricks and techniques to increase a car’s gas mileage has predictably opened the doors to a new flood of old gimmicks claiming they will boost your car to unprecedented levels of fuel efficiency.
The sad fact is, however, that most of these gimmicks are nothing less than myths, scams or well-aged shams, some of which have been around since the gas rationing days of World War Two.
Using top secret additives or even magnets to your car’s gas tank is not likely to save you so much as a dime on gas, Or so claims the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the arm of the United States government that monitors vehicle fuel efficiency. They monitor gas-saving claims and test any products they find for sale that claim to significantly affect gas mileage.
EPA scientists test fuel consumption by putting automobiles up on racks that allow the wheels to turn just as they would in real driving conditions, then “virtually” take the car over a computerized course.
Over the years, they say, they’ve tested more than a hundred products that claim to increase fuel efficiency and thus save on gas.
Most of these fall into two categories—either additives or gadgets. And the most common are liquid additives you add to your cars gas tank, gadgets that pump air into your carburetor and magnets that claim to change the molecular structure of gasoline.
In all it’s test, the EPA says, it has never found a single product that produced significant savings on gasoline—let alone the huge savings many claimed.
Despite the best efforts of the EPA to expose these shams, the claims continue, especially on the internet where so many old myths seem to find everlasting life.
It takes mere seconds with a search engine to turn up multiple pages of products making preposterous claims. We easily found products with prices ranging from $40 to $200 being sold on numerous sites, even though the spurious facts and figures used to justify their sales have long ago been exposed by the EPA.
Some of these products even attempt to cloak themselves in phony EPA approval by claiming to have been tested by “EPA-Certified Labs.” But the truth is, the EPA does not certify labs nor does U.S. federal government endorse any gas-saving products for cars.
And think about this—with auto manufacturers under such tremendous pressure to provide consumers with better fuel economy, they’d be all over these devices if any one of them could deliver the gas savings they claim.
While the promise of stretching your gas dollar to the max can seem awfully tempting—especially when the promising product costs only around $20—it’s best to beware. Most will be benign at best, while some of the worst have been shown to cause engine damage.
Before you attempt to stretch your budget by spending money on some of these gas-saving schemes, consider this: the real hypermilers, those road rangers actually getting 40 miles per gallon out of a car rated for 27, are doing it with techniques as simple as coasting until a car runs out of acceleration. That’s not a pitch you can sell from a web page, but it’s the easiest no-cost way to actually save on gas.
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