GainfulShrimp
06-08-2010, 05:05 AM
I got a freebie magazine in the post yesterday from Shell (I'm a member of their loyalty scheme, to earn AirMiles when buying petrol). As well as the usual luxury watch adverts and supercars etc, there was an interesting piece about attempting to drive from London to Monaco on a single tank of fuel with 'popular diesel family cars'.
The article claimed that none of the drivers were experienced hypermilers and they used cruise control at 60mph for a lot of the journey. They started at 65mph but worked out they would fall short over the distance, so slowed down a bit. It did say that they made an effort to avoid queues and judged the traffic conditions to avoid changing speed when they didn't need to, so they were at least being careful.
They used three cars:
saloon = VW Passat 1.6 CR BlueMotion
estate = Volvo V50 1.6 DRIVe Stop/Start
hatchback = Ford Focus Econetic 1.6 TDCi
All three cars did pretty well - two out of three made it the whole way without a topup of fuel (I think the Ford needed a small topup, but can't remember for sure).
But star of the show was the VW Passat... it made over 84mpg(imp), when its official 'combined' figure is 64.2mpg(imp). The writers claimed that, with it's generous 70 litre fuel tank size, this would give a maximum range of over 1,300 miles!
I tried Googling for the article but the online version of V-Zine seems to be the US edition and I couldn't see the article on there, so no link, sorry...
Anyway, it's done nothing to help with my long wait for my new car. ;) The one I've ordered (Seat Leon Ecomotive 1.6 SE) has the same engine etc as the Passat, but is about 100kg lighter and has some additional aero tweaks. Can't wait to see what it can do once its been run in a little! :D
The article claimed that none of the drivers were experienced hypermilers and they used cruise control at 60mph for a lot of the journey. They started at 65mph but worked out they would fall short over the distance, so slowed down a bit. It did say that they made an effort to avoid queues and judged the traffic conditions to avoid changing speed when they didn't need to, so they were at least being careful.
They used three cars:
saloon = VW Passat 1.6 CR BlueMotion
estate = Volvo V50 1.6 DRIVe Stop/Start
hatchback = Ford Focus Econetic 1.6 TDCi
All three cars did pretty well - two out of three made it the whole way without a topup of fuel (I think the Ford needed a small topup, but can't remember for sure).
But star of the show was the VW Passat... it made over 84mpg(imp), when its official 'combined' figure is 64.2mpg(imp). The writers claimed that, with it's generous 70 litre fuel tank size, this would give a maximum range of over 1,300 miles!
I tried Googling for the article but the online version of V-Zine seems to be the US edition and I couldn't see the article on there, so no link, sorry...
Anyway, it's done nothing to help with my long wait for my new car. ;) The one I've ordered (Seat Leon Ecomotive 1.6 SE) has the same engine etc as the Passat, but is about 100kg lighter and has some additional aero tweaks. Can't wait to see what it can do once its been run in a little! :D