With petrol and diesel prices on the rise, and showing no signs of stopping, the cost of running a vehicle has never been higher. £20 in the tank used to get drivers pretty far, but these days it seems £20 doesn’t get you half as far anymore.

Many drivers often blame their vehicle type for the amount of fuel consumption. Whilst this is true for the most part, your driving can also severely affect your vehicles fuel consumption, more so than you ever imagined. Altering your driving in simple ways can cut the amount of fuel you consume and make those pounds you spend at the pump go a whole lot further.

Get you car in top shape

When aiming to cut fuel consumption, the best place to start is by giving your car a little TLC. There are many simple, quick steps you can take in just looking after your vehicle that can aid in making the miles go further. 

• Check tyre pressure frequently: Under-inflated tyres are not only dangerous and but also increase your fuel consumption. Its best to always check tyre pressure before and after a long journey, but also on a monthly basis too. Having the correct tyre pressure will also improve vehicle handling: you’ll definitely feel the difference!
• Air conditioning – switching it off or using climate control on the ‘eco’ setting reduces fuel consumption. Did you know opening a window at high speed increases fuel consumption more than using air conditioning? During summer months, carry water to keep you cool instead of costly Air-con!
• Switch it off – cars use virtually no extra fuel when they’re re-started without pressing the accelerator. Turn off if you’re going to be stationary for more than a minute or two. There is a common misconception that if you are going to be stationary its best to leave the engine running: its not! Switching off is also good for the environment, not just your wallet.

Remember its not just about the car you drive, its the way you drive too that counts.

I was sat in the office today trying to find some great tyre quotes for a customer who was asking for some good tyres. When I asked what was important to them or if they had any preference in brand or model, the response was vague and they didn’t know what brand was on their car at the time.

So where do we start to help this customer – what does make a ‘good’ tyre?

GRIP

A fair place to start. We want our tyres to grip. We don’t want to be going round a corner or roundabout, turning the steering wheel only to watch in horror as the car slides off the road. When we accelerate or brake, the car should speed up and slow down, not just spin and skid about like a puppy on a frozen pond. Grip is important in all conditions too. We want our tyres to grip in the cold and the wet as much as we do in the warm and dry.

The rainy UK provides quite a challenge, especially with the frequency of ‘flash flooding’ these days. Great lakes of water suddenly appearing on hard dry ground with nowhere for it to drain – our tyres need to be designed to cut through this surface water to find grip on the surface below instead of ski or ‘aqua-plane’ across the top of the water.

WEAR

Although we want lots of grip from our tyres, we don’t want this at the cost of poor tyre wear. If a tyre is made of soft, sticky rubber it might provide lots of grip on tarmac but equally the soft rubber will wear down very quickly and we’ll be needing to replace them all too soon.

This is why we see the different tyres in Formula One. Soft tyres for super fast laps but not too many of them on tracks that cut into the soft tyres and wear them down. Hard tyres for lots of laps without pitstops but not quite as grippy for super fast cornering..

At TyreQuote.com we definitely notice that customers using cheaper tyres are coming back more quickly to replace them than those buying more expensive branded tyres that last a bit longer, with lower levels of tyre wear.

NOISE

Whilst some drivers and motorists seem to favour lots of noise judging by their mammoth fuel guzzling engines and monsterous exhaust pipes, there are others that like to enjoy a quieter ride. With electric and hybrid cars becoming more common and manufacturers working hard to keep the sound from their engines under the bonnet we are more and more finding general motoring a nice and quiet ride. If you have comfy air suspension to waft you over the bumps and lumps in the road then you can enjoy whispered conversation with your passengers even at 60mph.

However, believe it or not, this can be ruined by poorly designed or even just badly fitted tyres.

We’ve already decided we want tyres that grip and tyres that dont wear too quickly but if the pattern on the tyre is so harsh so as to give us grip, it could become incredibly noisy when it rolls and rattles along the rode. if the rubber is very hard and we have a very ‘low profile’ (not much rubber between our wheel and the road) tyre then equally we could be having a noisy journey again.

Compromise

So ideally we want a relatively smooth pattern on the tyre to keep it as round as possible and the lack of noise will also mean better aero dynamics, less drag and increased fuel efficiency. Perfect. Well almost – except as we reduce the pattern and hardness of the rubber, we lose our grip and tyre wear! D’oh!

So it’s not easy to find the perfect tyre. Like many things in life, it’s all about compromise. More grip, more tyre wear. Less grip, less tyre wear. More grip, more noise.. and it goes on.

It really comes down to what sort of driving do you so. If you have a 4×4 and actually go off road more than up on to the school curb then you will want more grip and probably wont mind the extra noise as you are merrily chewing up hills. If you potter around town at 30mph most of the time, then who needs lots of grip? Just find something hard wearing and with low noise and fuel efficient.

Do you live in the Scottish highlands or Yorkshire moors and have early starts up your steep cobbled drive? Okay, a little specific here but seriously think about winter tyres for the winter – you will get even more grip, especially on the snow and ice. You might be better off with a 4 wheel drive car than a rear wheel drive car too then you can benefit from the grip of all 4 tyres, not just the 2 spinning away at the back!

When you are looking for great quotes for tyres on TyreQuote.com make sure you look at our reviews of the tyres you think you want. Do they have the right levels of grip, tyre wear, noise and fuel efficiency for your driving?

Thanks for reading,

James

Today’s Hot Topic from TyreQuote.com is ‘Tyre Labelling’.

Sounds fascinating, doesn’t it?! Well to us, it could be. Let me explain…

In November 2012 another bit of European red tape will hit our shores and this time the impact will be on tyre retailers. The lovely people in Brussels have decided that all tyres should come with a label that allows consumers to easily compare 3 criteria – Fuel Efficiency, Wet Grip and Exterior Noise.

The labels will look much like the sort of thing you see on fridge freezers with coloured bands that range from a greeen ‘A’ to a rosy red ‘G’ with A being the best and G being the worst. We assume that low noise is good and higher noise is bad – contrary to what many motor enthusiasts believe to be true of their exhaust or engine notes!

So far there’s not much noise from the major tyre retailers about the forthcoming tyre labels, it will certainly cost them to ensure that all the right labels are displayed in the right places but in our view the concept is a good thing. At TyreQuote we already grade almost all of our tyres for Dry Grip, Wet Grip, Tyre Wear and Comfort. We then compile these measurements for an overall grading to help you purchase the right tyres for your motoring needs. We shall certainly be looking to add Fuel Efficiency and Noise to those gradings as soon as we can tease the data from the manufacturers.

We know that picking the right tyre can be a confusing task, especially if you do few miles each year and care little for the mechanics of the rubber wrapped round your wheels. The average punter is very much in the hands of the salesman/mechanic in their local fitting centre and we’re not saying that is a bad thing, but having clear and concise labels on each tyre has got to be an improvement on just the bewildering impressions of letters and digits we find on tyre sidewalls these days.

TyreQuote.com say yes to EU Tyre Labelling and look forward to displaying them on our site as soon as we can get the relevant data from the manufacturers.

James