Ford - helping you to save almost £500 a year on fuel costs

FORD SHOWS YOU HOW TO SAVE FUEL COSTS

IT’S got to be obvious to everyone that fuel will become more expensive, either from rises in duty or the extra VAT or both, but whichever, the fact is that filling up at the pumps is going to be more painful the AA is looking at a 20 p a gallon increase from January.
There are a number of strategies we can adopt to protect ourselves from this. We can drive less, we can swap our car to a more frugal one or we can alter our driving habits.
It has long been a contention of mine that most drivers can easily reduce their running costs by driving better, by looking and planning further ahead so they reduce the need to slow down and then reaccelerate. Acceleration drinks fuel and it’s silly to waste the energy you’ve spent getting up to speed by unnecessary braking.
Well Ford has now quantified the sort of saving you can expect from better driving and the saving works out on average at £470 a year. Now, if someone gave you nearly £500 in cash I reckon you would be pretty happy but that is what is available to all of us.
It’s running a programme which is comprised of an `Econo check’ on your car’s health and puts a data logger in your car for a week, monitoring your driving habits. If you own a Ford registered after 1998 you can sign up to be a part of the programme through any main Ford dealer.
At the end of the week the data will be downloaded and put into a personal report. You will be able to see data on your average speed, anticipation, braking and gear changes, recommending where driving style adjustments could improve fuel economy and emissions and showing the total fuel savings possible.
It costs £29.99 with £15 of that refundable at the customer’s next scheduled service so effectively you’re talking of less than £15 and if that helps the average driver to save the thick end of £500 a year that seems to me to be the bargain of the year.