Keep
the revs low
Cars
use the most fuel while accelerating in low gears. Taxi drivers in Mumbai avoid
low gears by accelerating slowly in second gear and then going straight into the
highest gear.
Buy
with your mind, not your heart
Cars
that go fast cost more, and on which congested road do you want to drive fast
anyway? You don’t need power to sit in traffic, which is why sales of the Suzuki
Alto 800 cc averaged 23 400 units a month for the best part of last year.
Check
the cents per kilometre
Car
gurus buy cars based on their running cost and pay no attention to 0 — 100 km/h
times. Billboards therefore inform the masses how little a car costs to run per
kilometre, not how fast it can go.
Make
each seat pay
South
African drivers often pick up paying commuters to make every seat in a vehicle
pay towards the fuel. But we are rank amateurs. On October 2, 2006, Mr A. Jetlee
of Karur rode an ordinary scooter with 17 students sitting on it on Kallannai
roads in Tamil Nadu without any failure. While this was a record, scooters can,
and do, carry a family of four in India, tuk tuks load eight and even lifts
measuring one square metre warn of overloading only after 10 people squeeze
in.
Take
the bus
Indians visiting Durban laugh when we
talk about congestion. With a billion people crammed into the cities, six
kilometres take over an hour to cross, whether by foot, scooter or car. Instead
of sufffering the heat and humidity, Indians take the air-conditioned bus. It’s
cheaper and you can read or sleep. Congestion takes on new meaning.
Use
the air
To
make driving costs even cheaper, India has started promoting compressed natural
gas (CNG) and auto-liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) kits in the vehicles.A
recent study shows that over 5,8 million vehicles will be burning CNG by the end
of 2020 in India. CNG has adverse effects on the performance of the engine and
drivers who want to pay less for fuel but still have power, typically opt to
install LPG kits.
