Compare Gas Mileage – Before You Buy A New Car
What is the first thing you look at when buying a car? The colour? Its top speed? Do you take note of its practical features, like the number of doors, its seating capacity, or do you look at its safety features first of all? All of these are important to take note of when choosing your car, of course. But there is another more important factor which should also come into the equation: better fuel economy. So compare gas mileage before you buy!
There are numerous reasons why buying a car with better fuel economy is important, and here are just a few!
Fuel Efficient Cars Save You Money
The average American mid sized car travels between 21 and 27 mpg, which is not bad in terms of fuel economy. Compare that to an average sized SUV, which gets between 13 and 16 mpg, and you can easy see that you will be paying a lot more if you opt for a car with a higher fuel consumption!
Even if both vehicles cost the same to purchase, in the long term, you would save money on fuel. In fact, if using the average of these two sets of figures, and driving exactly the same distance, you would save around 40%, just by getting more mpg. Make sure you compare gas mileage before you buy, and reap the benefits!
If you combine this saving with another strategy to save fuel consumption, such as starting a car pool to get to work, or at your children’s school, your savings would certainly add up! So, if you are in the market for a new car, or just looking for ways to save money on fuel, comparing fuel consumption when making a purchasing decision makes good sense!
The Global Economy is Oil Based
Whether we like it or not, the global economy is based on the cost of oil, which is used to produce gas, or petrol, and diesel. The reason for this is that oil is one area where it has always been a sellers market.
The huge global demand for oil, and oil based products, puts all at the mercy of the few oil producers out there. Consider this however – there are currently around 6.5 billion people on the planet. If each and every one of those people made an effort to save fuel, either by buying one of the fuel-efficient cars that save fuel, the reduction in demand would be enormous!
A reduced demand for fossil fuels, or, even better, a more concerted effort by consumers to switch to more environmentally friendly, organic alternatives, such as bio diesel or ethanol, would certainly send a strong message to the oil companies, that we, as the consumer, are no longer willing to be at the mercy of suppliers with their own, capitalist agendas.
More reasonable fuel rates, which could be a possible outcome, would in turn affect the cost of every single consumer product on the market. Consider that every single item we purchase is transported from the raw material manufacturer, to the processing plant, to a warehouse, and then to a store, before it ever reaches our house. If those transporters were using less expensive fuel, or even better, using fuel-efficient vehicles, the cost of transport, and the final price of the product on the shelf in the store, would be reduced.
Making a concerted effort to buy cars that get more miles per gallon, effectively, if practiced by everyone, would take a little bit of power away from the oil companies, and give it back to the consumer. Now isn’t that a nice thought?
If the economy is not enough of a reason to change your consumption habits, consider that the fossil fuel supply is finite. We are reaching a point where the end of that supply is in sight. One day soon, there will be no more petroleum, or diesel, and we will have no choice but to seek alternative energy.
Fuel Efficient Cars Are Better for the Planet
The last, and possibly most compelling reason, to choose a car that gets more mpg, is that the burning of fossil fuels is slowly but surely causing our planet to heat up, with catastrophic results not too far in the future.
Recent reports, in fact, have shown that permafrost, the material that currently keeps a far more dangerous greenhouse gas – methane – imprisoned in ice is beginning to melt. The more fossil fuels we burn, the more greenhouse gases escape into our atmosphere, and the hotter the world gets, in turn melting more methane from its protective casing.
As a direct result of our global fuel consumption, and the by products, we are silently and almost imperceptibly altering our global climate, and the more it changes, the faster the process will become.
Results of global climate change are being seen everywhere, with catastrophic weather being the most obvious and alarming indication of this change. Higher temperatures, and the resulting more erratic weather patterns are already causing events such as storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis. These will increase, with growing frequency and intensity, directly proportionate to the planets temperature. In short, if we want to have a habitable planet in the future, we need to pay attention now, and decrease our fossil fuel consumption.
Governments around the world are already taking notice of this, with measures such as the Kyoto Protocol having been put in place to stem the industrial flow of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Worls authorities and scientists also been looking at – and implementing – alternative methods of energy production, such as solar and wind power. And your piece of this puzzle? You can help by reducing your personal fuel consumption, and your overall carbon footprint.
So what should we do? Learn how to save fuel costs. Compare gas mileage before buying, drive a car with better fuel consumption, and help make the world a better place for our children and grandchildren to live in.
EPA Gas Mileage – What You Should Know