Once you get over fifty five or sixty miles an hour, every ten miles an hour faster you go, your fuel economy is reduced by about four miles a gallon ... .
It’s all about wind resistance and air flow around the vehicle; it’s just that the faster you go, the harder it is for your car to push aside all that air ... and the build up of air in front of you and that low pressure area behind your car creates something like a suction thats basically pulling back on your car ... .
So for a typical family sedan ... that gets twenty eight miles a gallon on the highway, if you’re going, let’s say sixty five to seventy miles an hour, that might drop to twenty four miles a gallon; that’s roughly equivalent to paying fifty four cents a gallon more for gas.
Listen to the full interview about fuel economy with Peter Valdes-Dapena...
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