Drive Smart, Save Fuel This Summer

STUDIO CITY (CBS) — With the summer driving season here, Chevy is teaching motorists how to drive smart and save fuel.

Shad Balch, General Motors's Environment & Energy Policy Representative, visited the KCAL 9 studios Thursday.

Gas Saving Tips:

1. Remove sports racks and rally flags, anything that can increase your vehicle's drag. You can put up those Lakers and Dodgers flags for home games or around play-off season. But you might want to limit how often you show your team colors. Also, if it's no longer snowboard season or you don't plan to go biking anytime soon, you'll want to consider removing those sports racks. A small change in aerodynamics produce big changes in fuel consumption.

2. Remove the junk from your trunk. People often forget or are too lazy to remove heavy items from their cars and will leave things there for weeks. This can be an expensive way to store things. According to EPA estimates, every 100 pounds of weight can reduce fuel economy by 2 percent. Of course, for your holiday road trip, junk in the trunk may be unavoidable, but be sure to unload all of your luggage and sporting gear as soon as you get home.

3. Check your tire pressure. A tire 10 pounds under pressure reduces fuel efficiency by 3 percent.
4. Roll up the windows. People often ask if it's more fuel efficient to drive with the A/C on or roll the windows down instead. At slower speeds, turning off the a/c can save you a little, but at moderate and faster speeds, open windows act like a parachute and consume more energy than air conditioning ever will.

5. Get that check engine light checked. Ignoring it could mean something is seriously wrong with your engine and may be impacting your fuel economy.

6. Bundle errands. A warmed up engine runs up to 50 percent more efficient than a cold one. If possible, it's better to run five errands in one afternoon than one errand five days of the week.

7. Get out of the drive-through lane and go into the restaurant. Idling for 15 minutes can burn through an average of a quarter of a gallon — adding another $1 to the cost of your latte.

8. Take it easy. Aggressive driving isn't going to get you home any faster in a congested city like LA. Driving smoothly can improve your mileage by 20 percent.

9. Driving 70, not 80. A 10-mph difference likely won't save you that much time, but it will save you up to four miles per gallon on the highway.

10. Try using cruise control when possible, and maintaining a constant speed over time, which is much more efficient than speeding up and slowing down over and over again.

For more, visit Chevy online.