Roof Rack Gas Mileage Impact

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.

Roof rack gas mileage impact.

A close second was the kayak with 28 percent or a change. Mileage went from 41 mpg at 65 mph to 40 mpg. The empty roof rack had a nearly 2 percent impact on fuel economy which translates to a little more than three quarters of a gallon of gas. Their study was published recently in the journal energy policy in a paper titled fuel consumption impacts of auto roof racks.

Mileage went from 41 mpg at 65 mph to 40 mpg. Unfortunately even an empty roof rack will affect mileage. 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 empty roof rack had a nearly 2 percent impact on fuel economy which translates to a little more than three quarters of a gallon of gas.

A drop of 7 percent may not sound like much but it adds up over time. 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. This editor many years ago in a move across the country to oregon from michigan found that the highway mileage of a four cylinder accord dropped from more than 40 mpg down to 32 mpg with a. 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 roof rack mpg experiment he compared the gas mileage of his car at 54 7 mph 88 kph with 1 no roof racks 2 an empty roof rack and 3 a mountain bike on the roof rack. I ll justify these numbers below.