Why gas consumption differs from highway to city
In: Engineering
Accelerating requires more power than maintaining speed; essentially when you maintain speed the power of the engine has reached equilibrium with friction and air resistance and other forces acting against it. If you want to go faster you have to upset the balance by supplying more power.
To that end city traffic is a lot of stop and go. If you’re always accelerating you never get to take full advantage of that equilibrium point. On top of that at the next stop light you have to shed all that energy you just got built up by hitting the brakes and start over again. All this keeps your car in the lower less efficient gears too, where it takes more engine spins per each turn of the tires.
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