How Much Fuel Does Removing A Roof Rack Save

Adding an empty roof rack to a vehicle can drop the gas mileage by about 7 percent.

How much fuel does removing a roof rack save.

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 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. Most simply clamp around your side rails or door jamb and can be removed by loosening a few bolts. 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.

Once you ve done this a time or two most roof racks will only take about 5 15 minutes to remove. 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. 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.

Some people even remove their spare tire for a good 40 to 80 pounds of reduction. 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. Aftermarket roof racks are typically much easier to remove.

And since air resistance increases exponentially with speed the difference would have been even bigger at 70 mph many people drive at that speed. It would be smart to remove them to save gas and money. The cheapest way out of course is to eliminate as much unnecessary vehicle weight as possible. It depends tremendously on who you ask and what vehicle is used.

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. I ll justify these numbers below. A close second was the kayak with 28 percent or a. This includes removing junk from your trunk.