With temperatures rising & fuel prices staying high, many drivers want to stay cool while saving money on gas. When it gets warm, drivers usually pick between rolling down the windows or turning on the air conditioning. Both choices affect how much fuel your car uses, even though many people don’t realize how much of a difference they make. Air conditioning uses a lot of energy while open windows increase wind resistance & make your engine work harder and burn more fuel.
You can use either option but sometimes one choice works better than the other depending on the situation. Chris Evans from Leasing.com talked about the benefits of both air conditioning and open windows. Research looked at different factors like how far windows were opened, how different cars handle wind resistance and how long the air conditioning ran.
He explained that 45mph is a useful guideline for deciding which option to use. Getting this decision wrong might seem unimportant but it actually affects your fuel consumption quite a bit. Running the air conditioning can increase fuel use by up to 10 percent while opening windows at high speeds can increase it by up to 20 percent.
Other studies have shown that hybrid cars lose more fuel efficiency from air conditioning than regular gas-powered vehicles. Research from Emissions Analytics found that air conditioning affects hybrid fuel economy almost twice as much as standard cars.
Hybrid cars saw fuel efficiency drop by 6.1 percent on average compared to 3.8 percent for regular petrol cars and 4.6 percent for diesel vehicles. Evans added that while 45mph works as a general rule, things change when you’re stuck in heavy traffic. In those situations it’s better to avoid both air conditioning & open windows if possible. That might be uncomfortable in hot weather so one solution is to turn on the air conditioning but close the vents.
This makes the system recycle the air already inside the car instead of pulling in air from outside where all the other cars are producing exhaust fumes. Other ways to keep your car cooler without using air conditioning include parking in shaded areas or in a garage. Tinted windows can also help drivers stay cool along with heat deflectors.
