Slowing all the way to the bank
by Simon Handby in Your car on 13.06.08
Oil’s setting records, Petrol’s extortionate, tanker drivers aren’t driving tankers and even the Prius can’t rescue us – isn’t there any good news for drivers? Well, yes, if only we’d calm down and take it easy.
Like many of us, I’ve been driving around for years thinking that a constant speed of 56mph was the driving equivalent of turning everything off at the socket. It turns out that this is nonsense. Tests by What Car have revealed that a modern cars’ best fuel economy comes at a somewhat more prosaic pace: somewhere between 20 and 40mph, in fact.
The magazine found that for most cars, the most efficient speed is the slowest you can comfortably drive in top gear. For example, driven by the magazine at a constant 20mph, a Citroen C4 1.6 diesel eked 99.6 miles out of a gallon. At 90mph it could only manage 29.3mpg – barely a third as efficient.
Now, it’s frustrating enough to find someone doing 56mph in the middle lane, but pootling along at 40mph or less could be plain dangerous. At 20mph you’d be going slower than the average cycle courier, and they’re not even allowed on motorways.
Not that that would stop them - not that anything does, come to think of it.
Meanwhile, BMW has come up with a strange kind of shape-shifting, fabric-covered car. Its fluid, silver skin is unsettlingly familiar until you think of Terminator 2, after which it’s simply unsettling.
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