Fuel Efficiency:Mythbusters Style

Mythbusters has been on air for almost a decade now, and they have already tested a lot of myths, suggested by fans and other rumors circulating the World Wide Web. The Mythbusters team is made up of special effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, along with the troika of Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci. With gas prices not dipping anytime soon, they aired a series of myths on how to make your car fuel efficient.

On their second season, they tested whether turning on the air conditioning inside a car would be more fuel efficient than lowering the windows when traveling. At a glance, doing such would not give you maximum fuel mileage. By just turning the A/C on, it decreases your fuel economy by at least 10%, on the other hand, rolling down your windows lets drag enter inside your car and it significantly dwindles a vehicles' fuel economy. Ironically the only way to combat drag is to increase your speed and in doing so you are dragging down your fuel economy further. The Mythbusters team tried this myth by running a vehicle in varying speeds, 89kph and 72 kph. In both speeds, the vehicle was subjected to turn the A/C on and to roll down the windows. As a result, it's more fuel efficient to travel with your windows down in lower speeds and turning the A/C on when traveling faster. Fast forward to their third season, they debated whether driving a pick-up truck with its tailgate down is more fuel efficient than it is up. In fact, letting the tailgate down creates drag at the back of your vehicle, which consumes more fuel than usual. Closing it creates a sealed vortex of air flowing over the vehicle that gives you a decent fuel economy.

They have also tried other myths like the dimpled car, which was inspired by the dimples situated around a golf ball and that is said to resist drag and travel farther than smooth golf balls. With that, they layered a car with clay then pressed dimples around it and drove it around The results were unexpected as fuel mileage improved from 26 miles per gallon to 29 miles on a single gallon. Other myths include taking right turns while driving, instead of driving normally, which is to wait for your turn go left. It's said that idling your vehicle uses up more gas than taking three right turns. Despite covering a longer distance and is time consuming, the right turn route improved fuel efficiency by 3%. Lastly, one of their famous myths is the "Great Gas Conspiracy", which is believed that gas companies are in cahoots with vehicle manufacturers to produce gas guzzlers. With this, they tested products marketed to make your car fuel efficient. These included carburetors and a water fuel cell. All failed to make your car fuel efficient, some even made it worse. Surprisingly, one of the products used on this segment was cooking oil. It was used as an alternative to fuel and it made the engine run but was deemed to be inefficient.

Like any another resource, fuel might also run out in the future and we might have to find a suitable alternative or save on gas to prolong our resources.