The Effect of Your Air Conditioner on Gas Mileage

This world is a crazy place. With the American economy behaving like it is, people all over the country are running around searching for ways to stretch their dollar, change the system, and take advantage of what things might be offered to them free or at a lower rate than usual. Like in older times, American citizens must learn the value of conserving things, using them as much as possible, and waiting to discard and replace them till the last minute. Gasoline is no exception.

Heaven knows how much the cost of gas has gone up in the past few years. Instead of paying under 30 bucks for a full tank of fuel, some people pay upward of 50, every time they fill up. To deal with that kind of craziness, people are looking for ways to save as much as possible, and get the most miles out of that gasoline that they can. For some, they are willing to sacrifice whatever it takes, including the air conditioning.

This idea stems from some statements made a few years back, about the way that the air conditioner works. The engine provides the air conditioning system within your car with enough power to do what it does, and so many people thought that by running the air conditioner constantly in those hot summer months, a person actually diminished the amount of miles that one tank of gas could push through.

While this may actually have been true for some of the older models of cars, it may not always be the case today. So much progress has been made in the fields of science, technology, and engineering, that new cars, with newly designed engines are coming out that are made to be much more fuel efficient than ever before. In fact, a huge change in fuel efficiency has occurred in just the past ten years or so.

What that essentially means is that, if you own a newer model of a car, you may not be in danger of losing a lot of the power your gasoline provides to the utilization of the air conditioning system in your car. Such a minimal amount of energy is expended to keep the air conditioner going, that it doesn't make a very noticeable difference at all.

What would make a difference is rolling down the windows while driving at high speeds. This would actually do just the opposite of what you'd hope. Instead of saving gas by not turning on the air conditioner, you would actually force the car engine to work much harder to produce the amount of energy it needed to go at those speeds with the windows down. Rolling down the windows can actually serve to be detrimental to the aerodynamics of the car, slowing you down, and wasting more gas than you think.

There are many other ways to save gasoline and your money by being smart and informed as to how to drive, and which vehicles are most efficient. Do your research before you buy a new car, and find something that has been engineered to be the kind of efficient vehicle you need.