Whether your daily trips involve driving through busy streets or scenic highways, both present unique challenges and affect your vehicle’s fuel consumption.
With a basic understanding of fuel consumption in both city and highway driving, useful tips for maximising your fuel efficiency and the help of Cartrack, you can significantly reduce your fleet’s fuel and maintenance costs.
Let’s start saving.
Fuel is a highly demanded, natural material that sometimes feels like it costs an arm and a leg. Depending on the vehicle type and the fuel used (petrol or diesel), the average South African motorist can expect to spend anywhere between R800 and R1200 for one full tank.
Of course, the price of fuel fluctuates, sometimes costing more than expected when it rises and sometimes giving vehicle owners a break when it dips. This is currently the state of fuel updates in South Africa.
According to recent reports, petrol prices have dipped by R1.25, while diesel follows behind with a cut of around R1.19 per litre.
With this in mind, many drivers and fleet owners alike have put their efforts into managing their fuel consumption rate and allocating suitable vehicles based on delivery locations, all in an attempt to take advantage of the decreased fuel prices and save every drop.
Not all roads treat your fuel tank the same.
After dispatching your fleet to deliver materials and packages via different roads, have you ever compared the fuel consumption of vehicles that drive through the city to deliver in suburban areas to those that use highways to deliver to factories and warehouses?
If you have, you’ll find that driving through urban streets causes your vehicle more strain, not just with fuel usage but wear and tear as well. Your engine works harder when navigating the streets, changing driving speeds, halting or coming to a complete stop at intersections, and so much more.
Let's see what makes these two have such an effect on your fuel efficiency:
City driving is full of short streets split by intersections, zebra crossings, traffic lights, and more. Here are the factors that influence your fuel consumption rate.
Open highways are easier on your tank, but there are still some downsides that affect your fuel efficiency.
The simple solution to this is to plan your trips around these busy hours:
Cape Town
Peak morning traffic: 05:30 to 10:00
Peak evening traffic: 15:00 to 18:30
Johannesburg
Peak morning traffic: 06:00 to 10:00
Peak evening traffic: 15:00 to 18:00
Similar to how these two types of roads affect your fuel consumption, they also affect your car’s engine health. Every day, when you are faced with driving through the city or on open highways when planning a trip or route for your fleet, consider these insights for your engine.
Open roads: Driving through open roads with no traffic or heavy loads to weigh you down can positively influence your engine health. A steady speed with minimal gear adjustments or acceleration can reduce wear and tear of the engine and reduce strain on it to produce power over long highway distances.
City driving: This is where your engine works the most. City driving requires frequent acceleration and braking. This constant speeding up and slowing down can increase strain on the engine and cause significant wear and tear, especially around spark plugs and timing belts. If your vehicle frequently drives around the city, it might require a bit more TLC to continue running smoothly.
Mountain roads: These roads wind around mountains and can sometimes go off-road, which can greatly affect your engine. Climbing steep hills requires a lot of power from your engine. This terrain is usually reserved for bigger vehicles like trucks with more powerful engines, sturdy tyres, higher torque, and stronger brakes, but proper and consistent engine tuning and maintenance are still needed to help mitigate the effects of these roads.
Practicing preventative maintenance management might be your perfect solution to ensure your maintenance bills don't stack up over time due to city or hilly terrain.
Focus especially on oil changes, filter replacements, and keeping your engine clean from grime or dirt that can accumulate there.
How can you determine which driving environment works best for your fleet? Whether your fleet consists of motorcycles or trucks, dispatching the right vehicle to a certain environment doesn't just impact fleet efficiency and operations but fuel as well.
Did you know that you could save around R10,00 per year in fuel costs travelling 20,000 km by choosing a hybrid vehicle instead of driving a vehicle using 95 unleaded petrol?
Driving the ideal vehicle types through specific areas will only get you so far in saving fuel attempts. Although this will help slow down fuel consumption, there are still extra fuel-efficient tips and tricks to reach their goals.
1. Maintain steady speed when driving and gently accelerate when needed
It's easy to maintain speed on the highway, but city streets may require you to speed up and slow down constantly. Remember, your vehicle burns more fuel when it slows down and bursts or accelerates when you hit the gas paddle from a stop.
Consider taking about 5 seconds to accelerate to 20 km per hour from a stop and then maintaining your speed from there.
2. The faster you go, the more fuel you burn
Use cruise control at a steady pace for longer on flat surface roads at the highest gear to decrease your vehicle’s fuel consumption rate.
The optimal speed for fuel efficiency in various vehicles (passenger cars, vans, pickup trucks and SUVs) is between 50 km/h and 80 km/h; any more, your vehicle’s fuel consumption rate increases.
3. Reduce idling
This is a tall order, especially when city streets and highways are jammed during peak hours. If your vehicle has not moved for more than 60 seconds while delivering packages or loading parcels onto it, it is better to switch the engine off than to stay idle.
In just 10 minutes, a 3-litre vehicle can waste up to 300 ml (more than 1 cup) of fuel while idling.
4. Use safe driving techniques when operating vehicles
How you drive a vehicle can influence how much fuel the vehicle uses. Unsafe driving habits such as speeding, harsh acceleration, and abrupt braking or cornering not only influence fuel economy but also contribute to wear and tear issues that might affect maintenance costs.
5. Don’t fall behind on your vehicle maintenance
The healthier the vehicle, the better its fuel efficiency. Following your vehicle’s maintenance schedule and regularly servicing, it ensures its performance as intended.
Believe it or not, tyre pressure also influences fuel usage. Make sure your tyres are inflated to the recommended amount by your vehicle’s manufacturer, which can be found on the edge of the driver’s seat’s doorpost.
Separate fuel-saving myths from truth, and click here for fuel-saving tips that actually work.
By practising these tips, you’ll not only achieve fuel efficiency for your vehicle(s) but enjoy these benefits as well:
Cartrack is acclaimed as the best vehicle tracking system by The Star readers and other South African motorists who trust its vehicle tracking and fleet management solutions.
They have an extensive line of features all ready to turn your vehicle(s) into well-oiled, optimised machines.
Here’s how Cartrack’s features can help you achieve your fuel efficiency goals no matter which roads you use.
Do you know you can potentially save between 5-15% on fuel just by using a telematics system like Cartrack to help you in your fuel-saving journey?
To prove this, Cartrack tested its MiFleet cost management tool with its utility fleet of over 700 vehicles. With MiFleet, we reduced total km travelled by more than 5% and fuel consumption per job by over 22%!
Similar positive findings were the case for our client, Calgan Recliners.
Calgan Recliners is a furniture company specialising in recliner chairs and lounge suites. They use their large fleet to deliver their furniture all over South Africa and like many fleets they started facing the challenge of high fuel consumption rates.
With Cartracks' smart fuel management solutions, Calgan Recliners improved their fleet’s fuel consumption rate and made it more fuel efficient.
Following the results, Cartrack thought of testing their solutions and conducting a test to prove fuel savings using our Delivery tool.
A Cartrack delivery solutions specialist took one of Calgan Recline's frequently taken routes and their 15 different drop-off points and used Cartrack delivery to provide a more efficient route to take to complete the 15 deliveries.
These were the results: We only drove 167 km, while the Calgan driver usually drove 195 km on the same route, showing a massive 28 km difference. This equated to 7 litres of diesel saved in a single day.
If used for a whole month, Cartrack Delivery could help Calgan Recliners save around R3000 in fuel costs per vehicle.
You can also achieve this level of fuel savings with Cartrack. There is no need to imagine what we can do for your fleet; see it. Partner with Cartrack today and start seeing the difference in your fleet’s fuel consumption and overall fuel costs.
Contact Cartrack today to get your free quote.
Get the insights you need on how to reduce your fuel consumption and save on costs whether you're navigating city streets or open highways.