If you want to make your car more fuel efficient and less wasteful, consider these 3 ideas for creating a greener driving experience for you and your car. None of these options is very difficult or over-the-top, and any of them can help you cut back on wasted energy use. To be green, one must only use what they need, so getting rid of wasteful redundancies is the key behind this 3-step strategy:
Change out the lights
Halogen headlight bulbs, the most commonly used type of headlight parts, waste much of their available energy as heat. This heat output provides no actual benefit, and simply expends energy that should otherwise be preserved for use in more vital automotive functions. If you want to save energy on lighting, try using HID lights. They focus most of their energy use solely on emitting light, and even with the energy savings, these lights are still several times as bright as halogen-based headlights are.
Trust the computer
Performance chips are custom automotive add-ons used to close performance gaps in various car systems. Using a performance computer chip, one can save around 4-7 mpg in fuel over time. This may not be quite the same as owning a hybrid, but you’ll save money on gas while also contributing less to fossil fuel purchases just to drive your car.
Go aerodynamic
The less wind resistance your car faces, the less reserve power it will have to use just to compensate for the forces caused by the wind working against your car. Items such as air dams and spoilers can move the air in an optimal manner around the car, resulting in less pushback from the wind, which in turn will reduce the strain on the engine. And we all know that less engine strain means less power wasted simply fighting against the air.