Honda Civic can travel even up to 18km/l

By Derryn Wong

SHELL’S EFFORTS AT helping consumers save money and the environment at the same time have taken a step up, with the introduction of their new ‘FuelSave’ formula, which it claims can reduce fuel consumption by up to one litre per tank, based on a 50-litre tank.

With the new formula, all you do is drive normally and you’ll save petrol. But the petroleum company has always promoted other ways of being more efficient, like through its Eco-Marathon, where teams from around the world compete to build the most fuel efficient vehicle.

Shell Singapore’s latest campaign, the One-Litre Challenge, saw its ambassador Eunice Olsen compete with other Shell representatives from around the globe to see who could go furthest on one tank of fuel.

She did pretty well, coming in second overall and beating multiple-LeMans winning race ace, Tom Kristensen, in the process! How many Singaporeans do you know can boast that?

When the One-Litre Challenge rolled into town (where it premiered under the cover of the FuelSave formula launch), we got our mitts on Shell’s own Challenge car.

The car is basically a standard Honda Civic fitted out with super-accurate fuel consumption monitoring equipment, measuring distance travelled, fuel used, fuel economy and other parameters in real time.

The data is stored and displayed on a miniature tablet PC located on the car’s dashboard – the measuring systems are so accurate they reflect everything to three decimal places.

When we got ahold of it, we decided to use it to answer another question: how much difference do fuel saving tips actually make?

To answer this, we drove the car on the same route successively, the only differences being driving style and the appliances used.

The Results

Our baseline run was a typical relaxed drive, averaging around 50km/h, with air-conditioning (AC) set to 24, fan set to ‘2’ , the radio on and headlights off. This yielded a fuel consumption (FC) of 12.970km/l, not too shabby.

The next run was done on bad-behaviour in defiance of fuel saving wisdom: running the engine at high revs, accelerating and braking hard and trying to imitate Michael Schumacher. In other words, imitating the common Singaporean road bully.

That meanness was rewarded with a pitiful fuel economy of 7.723km/l. We expected something worse, but it was quite shocking to see in black and white a non-descript Civic returning the typical fuel economy of a two-tonne monster sport utility vehicle driven sensibly.

The best (or worst) part was, we took only about a minute less to get to the end point (covering 2.7km) but consumed almost twice as much fuel. Which goes to show, leaving early and planning your route can save you a lot of petrol.

We made up for the bad behaviour by doing an earth-saving run where fuel-saving measures were taken to heart. Simply by driving a little slower, conserving momentum and turning the air-con off we used less than half the amount of fuel when driving fast, and 30 percent less than when driving normally – a very impressive 18.179km/l.

And we could have done a lot more to save fuel – minimising weight or optimising tyre pressures for instance. Even using moderate settings on the electrical appliances like the radio and headlights helps improve your mileage by 0.5km/l.

See our results below

Normal conditions (Aircon 24 deg, Fan 1, headlights off)
Distance: 2.702km
Time: 3min 13 sec
Avg. Speeg: 50.55km/h
Fuel used: 0.209 litres
Fuel Cons.: 12.970km/l

Excessive (Aircon: Lowest, Fan max, headlights on, stereo on)
Distance: 2.702km
Time: 3min 13 sec
Avg. Speed: 50.68km/h
Fuel used: 0.217 litres
Fuel Cons.: 12.542km/l

Fast (Aircon 24deg, Fan 1, headlights off)
Distance: 2.702km
Time: 2 min 32 sec
Avg. Speed: 64.29km/h
Fuel used: 0.352 litres
Fuel Cons.: 7.723km/l

Econo (Aircon off, stereo off, headlights off)
Distance: 2.702km
Time: 4 min 34 sec
Avg. Speed: 35.51km/h
Fuel used: 0.149 litres
Fuel Cons.: 18.179km/l