Vans and other larger vehicles don’t have a great track record for having good gas mileage. Sometimes people will judge you for your assumedly obvious lack of concern for the environment and your fuel consumption. Don’t let them get you down! They don’t understand. Of course, your van is totally poisoning the air and siphoning money straight from your wallet and into its gas tank, but so is every car on the road. There are ways you can satisfy your beast’s insatiable thirst and hopefully ease your ethical struggle a bit. It’ll just take a little more intention and effort.
Presuming your van is well maintained and that you understand that simply driving less will keep fuel consumption down, I’ll outline my own philosophy of driving and maintenance in later posts, there are three points that come to mind that directly effect gas mileage.
Weight
Acceleration
Tires
Each of these variables are independently substantial, but when combined, create an even more drastic effect.
Weight
The more you put in your van, the more gas it will need to push all that stuff.
Acceleration
When you put your foot on the gas pedal, it burns fuel. I know, I know, that was news to me too. You have to do it to get the wheels rolling, sure, but the catch here is how you do it. Even an empty van is heavier than a lot of cars so accelerating slowly really makes a difference. Sorry to all you lead footed, stoplight drag racers out there, as much as I’d love to put the pedal to the metal an leave you in my van’s dust, I’m trying to be mindful. You really do save a lot of gas when you tiptoe on the pedal until you’re up to speed.
Tires
I always say your two most important parts of your van are your brakes and your tires. They are the two things that keep you in control of your big rolling steel box, you have to have traction and be able to stop. In relation to gas mileage, what tires you have and how you care for them can drastically change mpg (miles per gallon).
Firstly, let’s talk about tire care. Making sure your tires are inflated to the correct pressure not only affects gas mileage, but is also a major safety concern. It’ll prevent some preventable blowouts, give you better traction, help wear your tread evenly, and will allow you better control of the steering. In regards to mpg, if your tires’ pressures are lower than the advised amounts, you can generally see a proportionate drop in fuel efficiency. As a side note, deflating your tires a bit may help in moments where you’re stuck and need more traction, like in snow, mud, or sand, but I cannot actually advise you to do that. Please be careful!
On the flip side, tires with higher than recommended pressures may see an increase in mpg, and a drastic increase in the risk for a blow out. Have you ever put too much air in a balloon, or a bubble? What did it do? It totally popped, right? Yeah, similar thing with tires. I don’t recommend it. However, the harder your wheels are, the less friction you’ll generally see, thereby reducing the amount of “slow down” and potentially increasing the efficiency. Lot’s of variables come into play there, like tread, tire size, terrain, what have you, so this is just a vastly generalized concept. Harder tires may use less gas, but stay within safe limits as described on the tire and in the manual.
Along with tire pressure, checking your tires tread itself is also important for safety and gas mileage. This is when it gets a little tricky. New tires with fresh tread generally will see worse gas mileage than a worn down used tread of the same tire. It’s all about friction, or how the tire grips the road as it moves across it. The new tire will usually grip better than the used tire and that extra resistance cuts into your fuel efficiency a bit. With that said, the new tire will offer better control of the vehicle and be well worth the extra little bit of gas mileage. You know what the two most important parts of your van are? Yeah, brakes and tires. Safety first everyone!
New tires are a wonderful thing. It’s like getting a new pair of shoes for your van, and since we’re talking about tread, let’s take a look at how new tires might affect your mpg. There are many types of tires out there, from racing slicks, to all terrain, to low profile tires, all for their specific niche in the wheel community. I’ll keep it simple here and focus on two categories for vans.
Standard tires and offroad tires
Standard tires are for your highway haulers and around town troubadours. They optimize your gas mileage while still having roadworthy traction. Standard tires are your all around staple.
Offroad tires, on the other hand, are for your off the beaten path adventurers and snow stompers that need a little more traction to get where they’re going. What this does for mpg, however, is it adds rotational weight to the wheel causing it to want to slow down. On top of that, they tend to be more grippy on the road as well, which means more friction to slow it down, which means more gas to counteract all that slow down.
Each type of tire has it’s place, and sometimes you may need to sacrifice some fuel economy for safety. Like I said, the two most important parts of your van are the brakes and tires. Always take care of them.
Shop Around
When you take care of your van and you stay mindful of how you drive it, you’re really optimizing the fuel your van consumes. It’s like eating right and exercising. The better you treat your van, the better it’ll treat you. Yet even still, even if you’re doing everything you possibly can to keep your fuel consumption down, you’re not loading your van up too much, you’re feathering the gas to accelerate, and you’re keeping your tires in tip top shape, you may still feel the weight on your wallet. With rising fuel costs, it can especially tough, but you’ll have to fill up your gas tank at some point. How can you possibly make your gas money go just a bit farther? You shop around.
There are a couple different ideas on the practicality of doing this. One is that driving around to find better gas prices at stations burns more fuel than you’d be saving from trying to save a few pennies per gallon, and often you might get stuck paying even more because you get desperate when you’re almost out of gas. This is, honestly, often true. Been there, done that, and highway robbery is real. The other stance is that planning is everything. When you plan ahead, or at least stay informed about what a good price for gas is, and don’t wait until you’ve been on “E” for several miles, you can fill up when you deem it worthy.
When you plan ahead, you stay in charge. Get to know the areas you drive often and research the areas you’re traveling to. Keep a mental map, or plot out a physical one, of the best places to fuel up and take that in consideration when you’re on the move. Sometimes waiting until you’re in the next town or off the highway can make a huge difference. There are resources like www.gasbuddy.com or www.autoblog.com/cheap-gas-prices/ that you can use to help in your planning. Taking care or your van, staying mindful, and keeping in the loop with what the market is in certain areas can really help to make that gas money go just that much further.