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Vehicles that save on Fuel

Everybody is trying to save money and this means saving on car fuel too. Potential car owners need information that will help not only get the most affordable four wheeler in the market but also car that is not a fuel guzzler but is still a freak in the streets.

Price: $25,260

Mileage: 30 city, 42 highway and 34 combined mpg

As the only small diesel-powered station wagon on the market, the VW Jetta SportWagen has no peers. Its fun-to-drive dynamics, impressive fuel economy and voluminous 67 cubic feet of maximum cargo space collude to make one very unique vehicle.

A 140-horsepower, 2-liter, turbocharged four-cylinder engine generates the go. The same 2-liter engine powers this list’s Audi A3 and Golf TDI as well. A six-speed manual transmission hustles engine output to the front wheels. For an additional $1,100, a six-speed, driver-shiftable automatic tranny can be substituted for the manual and will scrub 1 mpg from the combined fuel number.

Price: $30,250

Mileage: 30 city, 42 highway and 34 combined mpg

Audi calls its front-wheel-drive 2011 A3 a Sportback. This is luxury-speak for hatchback, but it looks suspiciously like a wagon to us. In any event, what’s important is its utility and stingy fuel economy.

Under the A3’s hood is a 140-horsepower, 2-liter, turbocharged, four-cylinder diesel engine. Although the pony count may not be impressive, it generates 236 foot-pounds of torque, which is what gets a vehicle moving from a standstill. Getting to 60 miles per hour from a stop takes 8.9 seconds by Audi’s stopwatch.

Standard is Audi’s S tronic six-speed, driver-shiftable, automatic transmission.

Sourced from: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/auto/5-diesel-cars-save-fuel-3.aspx

There is new technology that promises a lot for card drivers. The auto stop start that has shown great results in saving gas and currently installed in some vehicles.

Popular Mechanics, AAA, and others have busted this myth, pointing out that a vehicle gets negative miles per gallon while idle. The consensus advice now is that if you car is stopped for more than a minute, the smart move is to turn the engine off.

The arrival of auto stop-start, a technology most often seen in hybrids, does this work for you, and not only if you’re idle for minute or more. As the name suggests, the tech shuts off the vehicle’s engine automatically when the car comes to a stop—at a red light, say—and then starts it again in the jiffy when the driver takes a foot off the brake pedal.

The technology has slowly been spreading beyond hybrids to a few vehicles powered by traditional internal combustion engines, and new research from AAA indicates that this is a good thing. After testing several cars with the feature, researchers concluded that the tech is a no-brainer that saves drivers 5% to 7% on gas costs annually.

Sourced from: http://time.com/money/3034212/auto-stop-start-fuel-efficiency-save-gas/

It does not mean that you need to dump your old car and buy a new one. There is still hope for you and there are simple tips to implement to ensure that you save the money you use on fuel.

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Don’t drive in the rush hour

There are few worse places to spend your time than stuck in a traffic jam, but it’s also a very expensive way of travelling. Every time that you stop and start in traffic, your car needs first gear and a huge amount of fuel to get moving again. Second gear is not much better. The best solution is to not travel during the rush hour. You can also save some fuel by trying to understand what the traffic is doing in front of you, and travelling steadily at a slow speed, rather than accelerating and braking. If you have to travel in rush hour a lot, then you could consider buying a hybrid car, which uses much less fuel in town than a normal petrol or diesel.

Close the windows (and sunroof, if you’ve got one)

It’s not so much of a problem when you’re driving in town (see above), but when you’re out of town or on the motorway and moving more quickly, the shape of your car is very important. Car designers call it aerodynamics and make lots of effort to reduce the ‘drag’ and make the car as sleek as possible. Anything that makes wind noise as your car goes along is actually making your car more expensive to run. You can’t do much about the design of your car, but you can avoid making it worse by not leaving the windows and sunroof open. It’s better to use the air vents for most of the year, and the air-conditioning when it gets too hot.

Sourced from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/advice/10-fuel-saving-tips-every-driver-should-know/