I keep seeing ads from fuel stations that say their fuels increase the mileage of the car but isnt the car doing all the fuel adjustments?Wouldnt it still pull the same amount of fuel from the gas tank?
In: Engineering
It doesn’t really, or at least not significantly. The energy content of gasoline is more or less the same no matter what brand you buy.
There are two factors that can have a small effect on the fuel consumption:
* Gas that contains bio-ethanol has slightly less energy than straight gasoline. So if the fuel contains no bio-ethanol, the fuel consumption will be slightly better.
* Gas with the wrong octane rating can make the engine computer change its ignition timing, causing the engine to run less efficiently, but that shouldn’t happen as long as you’re using the recommended fuel.
It’s true that the engine computer controls how much fuel is injected, but it does what your foot is telling it to do. So if the fuel contains less energy or the engine computer pulls ignition timing and the engine is making less power as a result, you will still want to go the same speed, so you will give it more throttle, which causes the computer to inject more fuel.
But really, it’s mostly just empty advertising promises.
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