Save Gas With Goodyear

Gasoline prices in the USA have reached new heights recently; a gallon of gas now costs $1.526, up 40 cents from a year ago. Never mind that this price seems ridiculously cheap to most European motorists – for the US motorist, this is a major blow.

Bill Egan, Goodyear’s Chief Engineer of Product Design, recently spelled out the relationship between under-inflated tyres and fuel consumption and tread life. Running a tyre 20 p.c.

under-inflated (typically 5 p.s.i.

) increases fuel consumption by 10 p.c. and reduces tread life by 15 p.

c., said Egan. Five years ago, the Energy Department estimated that four million gallons of gasoline a day were wasted on US roads, due to under-inflated tyres.

At today’s prices, that equates to $6.1 m wasted every day.How bad is the problem? Goodyear carried out a parking lot survey, checking the pressures of 1,000 tyres.

Over 28 p.c. of vehicles had one or more tyres below the recommended pressure.

Bill Egan recommends a monthly pressure check and hopes that better awareness will lead to increased appreciation of the role played by the tyre. As an example, most of today’s OE tyre fitments are designed for low rolling resistance (and thus better fuel economy) and Egan believes that better understanding will see more like-for-like tyre replacement, as motorists realise that tyres can save them fuel and money. He estimates that, if half of the motorists currently driving on under-inflated tyres were to maintain their tyres at the correct pressure, then the shortfall of gasoline in the USA, and the price rises which inevitably follow, would be a thing of the past.

It is interesting to contrast the US figure with data from the UK. Despite the much higher price (x3) of fuel in the UK, and the higher potential savings, a survey of passenger cars revealed a story of waste and neglect. The NTDA checked 40,000 car tyres, of which only 10 p.

c. were inflated in accordance with the car manufacturer’s recommendations. Of the remaining tyres, 63% were wrongly inflated up to 5 p.

s.i., 22 p.

c. were incorrect by up to 10 p.s.

i. and 15 p.c.

were outside recommended pressures by more than 10 p.s.i.