19-07-2021, 07:08 PM
The Highway Code used to strongly say you should not coast out of gear, but this has now been changed. It says you should be aware of various things, but no longer forbids coasting.
I felt that coasting in a modern car would not save anything as the fuel supply would be cut off anyway, but my 7 year old modern does use less petrol if coasting. Hills always reduce the mpg, but coasting out of gear does help to conterbalance this. Of course I'm just going by the digital readout on the dash. I have compared that to a true 'brim to brim' mpg, and measured the distance with motorway distance posts. When new the readout was about 7 mpg low compared to the true figure. A recent check was more like 4 or 5 mpg low.
With care I can coax 52 mpg out of the 1.4 petrol over a 50 mile distance.
I felt that coasting in a modern car would not save anything as the fuel supply would be cut off anyway, but my 7 year old modern does use less petrol if coasting. Hills always reduce the mpg, but coasting out of gear does help to conterbalance this. Of course I'm just going by the digital readout on the dash. I have compared that to a true 'brim to brim' mpg, and measured the distance with motorway distance posts. When new the readout was about 7 mpg low compared to the true figure. A recent check was more like 4 or 5 mpg low.
With care I can coax 52 mpg out of the 1.4 petrol over a 50 mile distance.