The most effective way to save fuel is:
- Don’t floor the throttle, use light presses.
- Anticipate the road ahead to avoid heavy braking - where possible just lift off and coast, only using the brake to come to a full stop.
- When cruising ease off the throttle a little - you can do this without losing momentum or speed.
- Try and drive at a constant speed and close enough to the car in front that other cars can’t pull out of junctions in front of you causing you to slow down and build momentum again.
- Lift off the throttle when coasting down hill. Just dab the throttle occasionally to keep momentum.
If you have the active dials set to show Efficiency and Range, the dial on the left showing MPG has a red bar going around the dial. This shows how efficiently you’re driving. Similar to the Think Blue function.
Of course driving like this kind of defeats the purpose of owning a GTI but if you’re stuck on a single carriage A road with zero chance of over-taking then you may as well save some fuel and play the MPG challenge to relieve the boredom!
All really good points.
I’ve taken somewhat of a back seat now but was involved for a while with professional (commercial) driver training and I work alongside programs that monitor commercial driver performance. I’m not a big fan of the latter spy in the cab software by any means but it’s here to stay and on the increase in many stealthy ways. Just wait until we are all in mk8’s and VW is watching everything we do...
One thing that will probably be familiar to advanced drivers is setting yourself a challenge to not come to a complete stop (aside from junctions where it’s impossible or illegal not to!) including traffic lights, plus attempting to use the brakes as little as possible to maintain momentum.
The latter I’m very good at as I spent much of my young driving life with VW’s that had intricate BBS wheels that had to be cleaned with a toothbrush. If that doesn’t make you hate cleaning wheels and keep brake dust to a minimum then nothing will!
As in Mutleys post above, driving is all about anticipation which has the side benefit of being lighter on the wallet!
I know there are those that decry driving performance Golfs and focusing on fuel economy but at the end of the day these are Golfs and therefore should have a decent blend of abilities for everyday use.
Those that don’t care obviously either don’t pay for their own fuel or have stratospheric household salaries. Plus there’s the aspect of resources and future generations. Blah blah blah, yawn.
Golf GTI’s are remarkably good on fuel owing to light(ish) weight coupled with an immensely flexible and tractable engine. It’s easy to waft along on the torque feathering the throttle and still maintaining quite quick progress in comfort with a fantastic chassis that is hard to upset.
As Mutley said, when it’s not possible to be racing around due to the roads and/or conditions it’s good to set other challenges to alleviate the boredom and keep concentration levels high.
Christ that was a boring post. I can’t believe I just wrote that.
I now feel the desire to hit the tarmac using overboost at every opportunity to get it out of my system!
Except it’s a Sunday in the West Country and the roads will be clogged with the predictable hordes... I’ll stay home instead.
