How Much Fuel Does Removing A Roof Rack Save

And since air resistance increases exponentially with speed the difference would have been even bigger at 70 mph many people drive at that speed.

How much fuel does removing a roof rack save.

Old clutter toolboxes extra baggage. Most simply clamp around your side rails or door jamb and can be removed by loosening a few bolts. The gear with the most impact were the dual mountain bikes strapped to the roof which impacted the fuel economy by 31 percent or 9 mpg. He found that compared to the baseline of no roof rack the empty rack reduced his mpg by 12 7 and the roof rack with a bicycle reduced it by a whooping 27 3.

The cheapest way out of course is to eliminate as much unnecessary vehicle weight as possible. Removing bike racks from suv s is popular as well. Adding a bike to the equation caused fuel consumption to jump by 35 compared to their baseline settings. An empty rack has been reported to increase the cost of fuel over time from anywhere from 1 to 15 while a fully loaded roof rack will add 20 to 50 to your fuel bill.

The researchers estimated that a government policy to minimize unloaded roof racks admittedly extreme in combination with more energy efficient designs would result in cumulative savings of the equivalent of 1 2 billion gallons of gasoline over the next 26 years. That roof rack is killing your fuel economy berkeley lab research says it cost 100 million gallons of gas in 2015. This means that adding an empty roof rack to a car that usually gets 35 mpg will drop the gas mileage to 32 5 mpg. It depends tremendously on who you ask and what vehicle is used.

Aftermarket roof racks are typically much easier to remove. A close second was the kayak with 28 percent or a. The researchers estimated that a government policy to minimize unloaded roof racks admittedly extreme in combination with more energy efficient designs would result in cumulative savings of the. Once you ve done this a time or two most roof racks will only take about 5 15 minutes to remove.

I ll justify these numbers below. When consumer reports tested how roof racks affected fuel economy in 2013 they noticed a 5 mpg drop at highway speeds from an empty rack. A drop of 7 percent may not sound like much but it adds up over time. This includes removing junk from your trunk.