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• Consider getting a tonneau cover for your pickup truck, as this will help to minimize drag over the cargo bed and allow the vehicle to slip through the air stream more efficiently. Do not, however, lower the tail gate as this creates more turbulence as air rushes over the cab and will decrease economy. Leaving the tailgate up creates a bubble of air in the bed area resulting in less disruption to the air traveling over the cab, in effect it acts like a less efficient tonneau cover.
• Use your cruise control. Maintaining a constant speed over long distances saves gas. The next time you drive without cruise engaged, note how your speed creeps up and down. Constant deceleration, followed by acceleration, uses more fuel. The cruise control feature keeps your speed constant, saving gas (and maybe a speeding ticket, too).
• Avoid long idling. If you anticipate being stopped for more than one minute, shut off the car. Restarting the car uses less fuel than letting it idle. For most hybrids, this is not an issue, because the gasoline engine automatically shuts down when the car is stopped, and the accessories – such as the air conditioning, lights, and stereo – operate off the juice stored in the battery pack. This is also one reason that hybrids often get better fuel economy in the city than on the highway – the gasoline engine is shut off when idling in traffic.
• Consider purchasing a fuel-efficient vehicle, but only if you’re planning to replace your current car anyway. You might want to consider downsizing just a bit. By this we don’t mean selecting a smaller engine for the same size vehicle. Instead, get a smaller vehicle. If you select the smallest engine available for a larger vehicle, you will end up using more fuel because the smaller engine has to haul the same weight as the larger engine, therefore it has to work harder and might use more gas. For example, a pickup truck with a V8 could get better gas mileage than a comparable truck with a V6, because the more powerful V8 works more efficiently to move the truck’s mass.