Trucking Companies Monitor Idling to Save on Gas

Idling and speeding are two gas burning activities which generate little benefit. Trucking companies have spent decades looking to reduce them. You can save on gas and money too by adopting the habits of the trucking companies ... reduce idling and avoid speeding. You won't miss them and your wallet will thank you!



If you're interested in regular cars that are just a bit more efficient make sure to read tomorrow's post. I will be putting up some information on the Chevy Cruise Eco an the Chevy Cruise RS.

Idling Burns Gas and Money

Idling burns gas and gets you nowhere. Here are some tips you can use to reduce idling time and save on gas ... and money!

Mazda Idle Stop System

Most drivers waste a lot of gas sitting still with the engine idling. This happens in stop and go traffic, when you are at a red light, when you have to wait to make a left turn and when you are waiting at the curb to pick up your kids. It is hard or impractical to always manually switch your engine off and on in all of these circumstances. Engine technology is coming to the rescue, providing engines which automatically stop and restart when the vehicle idles. The tricky part is having the engine come back into action quickly. If you are waiting to make a left turn and your engine shuts off automatically to save on gas, then it has to restart when you stamp on the gas pedal. You want a speedy reaction ... maybe a short window of opportunity for your planned left turn opened up in the traffic flow. The Mazda 3 has a new system which supposedly allows for much faster restarts. That is very good news for saving on gas ... now we can stop burning gas uselessly while sitting still and drive off again quickly. Once again, note how it was not Detroit pioneering in this important fuel economy technology. Detroit's focus on short term profit from large vehicles blinded it to the coming reality of permanently high gas prices, and the result is the growing obsolescence of US automakers' products in the global market.

Fiat Start and Stop System

A great way to waste gas is to sit still with your engine idling. Every second of idle wastes gas to turn the engine over without getting you anywhere. Stop and go city traffic can be a big gas waster because of this. While it is fairly easy to remember to shut off the car while waiting to pick up a friend, for example, it is much harder to manage stopping and starting the engine while you are driving in city traffic. The Fiat 500 Start & Stop System is a technological fix to that problem. The Start and Stop System automatically shuts off the engine when the car comes to a stop and automatically starts it again when the driver presses the accelerator. The driver does not have to think about idling at all. The system takes care of avoiding those fuel sucking idles.

The Start and Stop System is based around a special high performance starter and battery that together are able to quickly start up the engine over and over again. If you tried to replicate that with an ordinary car, you would find the starter would not have to power to instantly fire up the engine. Worse, after a half hour of starting and stopping in stop and go traffic, you would drain the battery and be stopped dead! Of course the Fiat Start and Stop System also depends on computer control to decide exactly when to stop and start the engine.

This is an excellent example of a relatively simple technology being put to work to save on gas. There are many other similar non revolutionary but rather incremental changes that could be combined to produce cars that get double the fuel economy of typical Detroit products. Fortunately for those who want to save on gas, nobody has to wait on Detroit anymore: just buy from the Europeans!