Fuel prices continue to fluctuate, which continues to affect many people’s budgets. This is one of the main reasons why people opt for fuel-efficient vehicles. There isn’t much a driver can do in a car with an automatic transmission. However, the driver is in control of a car with a manual gearbox. Here’s how a car’s gears affect fuel efficiency.
Everyone knows that higher gears help extract the best fuel efficiency, but a person can only follow this while driving on highways because a higher gear means higher speeds. In cities, a person has to keep an eye on many things and the amount of traffic is also more than a car cannot be driven at high speeds. The engine would start dragging which is bad for your health if the person drives at slow speeds in higher gears.
Mostly the gears that would be used in cities will be 1st, 2nd, 3rd and sometimes 4th. The trick is to find the rhythm between the gears where the engine feels smoother and isn’t under stress. The driver needs to watch the rev range where the engine does not kick when shifting gears and pulls smoothly.
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1st gear should be used whenever the car is crawling or needs to start moving from scratch. What some people would do is use 2nd gear, which is not the best because it puts pressure on the engine. 1st gear has the most amount of torque which helps the vehicle to crawl forward with ease. Second gear can be used to get around where there is a bit of traffic, but still, the speed is higher than single digits. Third gear can be used when there is an open stretch of road ahead or the speed is more than 40-45 km/h. It’s important to note that all of this can vary from vehicle to vehicle, as gear ratios are different and so are fuel types.
Date of first publication: 22 Apr 2023, 18:06 IST
