Fuel Saving Tips

Drive in higher gears

On my old car I would always shift the automatic transmission into 3rd around town and when going up steep highways so the engine wouldn't rev as much when the transmission hunted for the right gear. On that particular car it didn't seem to hurt the mileage at all. However, I now have a newer car with an instantaneous mpg readout that shows that shifting from drive ("D") to 3rd when going up long inclines immediately caused a 25-30% drop in mpg. Fortunately, my new car has more torque, so it doesn't rev and hunt when going uphill, so I can leave it in D always and get better gas mileage.