[MetroMPG.com] List of reasons why your winter mileage is so bad

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

4. Crappy road conditions
(snow, wet and slush adds significant rolling resistance)

Winter road conditions are crappy for one more reason: potholes! They start showing up around mid-winter and multiply exponentially until spring. They are responsible for sudden braking, swerving and/or tire/rim damage. Now that sucks.

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

12. Added weight
Owners of RWD vehicles often place significant extra weight (eg. bags of sand or salt) in the back of the vehicle for traction in snow. Also, how about not cleaning heavy ice and snow off? We just had an ice storm that put a thick, heavy coating on everything.

After each trip in the snow I get a big ball of slush behind each wheel (mini boattails, anyone?). A few weeks ago I heard in the local news about how the rail operators deal with winter: before each trip each carriage has to be de-iced. There can be over 1 ton of ice stuck to the underside of each railway car. I can only wonder how much snow/ice gets deposited in places I don't see.

[brucey]

I notice a big hit in the snow because I keep it in low gear instead of braking going downhill, so first or second gear is all I ever see. During these last few 'snowpocalypse' storms (not that bad) I couldnt get better than 10 mpg if I tried.

[wagonman76]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

Winter road conditions are crappy for one more reason: potholes! They start showing up around mid-winter and multiply exponentially until spring. They are responsible for sudden braking, swerving and/or tire/rim damage. Now that sucks.

Around here potholes are a year round thing. Some circulating emails say you know you're from Michigan if some roads are better in the winter because the potholes are full of snow. It's true.

- If you ever get stuck, you've blown the FE for that tank. Won't happen in the summer.

- Some towns (at least around here) have very confusing rules about city winter parking, something like if you're an odd numbered address you can only park on odd days of the week, next week you have to switch, so you have to start and move your car all the time, reducing overall FE.

- School buses. You have to stop for them all winter long, but never in the summer (at least here there's no school in the summer). If I don't leave extremely early for work, I'll be stuck behind 3 buses in a row and it will take me 15-20 minutes to go 4 miles.

[shovel]

I get worse mileage in the summer! Winter time I can cruise around with the windows open to stay comfortable, in summer I have to run the A/C constantly or arrive at my destination drenched in sweat

[Peter7307]

Not sure about Nr3: Hard tyres not rolling well.

Surely the logical extension here is solid tyres or steel wheels which have very low rolling resistance...or am I missing something?...reading the post the wrong way?

Pete.

[Jyden]

Lots of us has to use winter tires during the cold season, if not - one simply are not beeing able to get anywhere, as summer and all year tyres has to little grip in snow and on ice.

Winter tires are made of a softer compund, and has lots of small groves in the rubber. Below 7 degrees centigrade ordinary tyres starts to loose grip as the compund stiffens.

But I suspect, that the added grip from the wintertyres (soft compund and many grooves) adds rolling resistance?

On bare tarmac my winter tyres "sing" - I take this as a sign of added rolling resistance.

PS: Cant wait until spring when I can mount my LRR Michelin Energy Savers again

[Piwoslaw]

Generally winter tires are softer and have more RR, but... Certain winter tires may be better (RR-wise) than certain summer/all-year tires. Basjoos recently switched to Nokian Hakapelitta winter tires and it seems they aren't that bad:

Originally Posted by basjoos

Nokian Hakapelitta R 175/70/13. They have more RR than my Bridgestone Potenza RE92, but less than the Sumitomo HTR4 that I was running earlier. Much better on snow and ice than the Bridgestones and they handle fine enough on dry pavement that I wouldn't mind running them year around if I had to. Their only drawback is they take a bigger FE hit on wet roads than the Bridgestones.

[darcane]

+1 on School.

The day school starts in the fall, my commute suddenly takes 5-10 minutes longer each way. There are school buses and parents driving to drop off their kids all adding to traffic flow.

And just as quickly, the traffic fades away on the last day of school. Summer commuting is far easier on mileage (good thing, since fuel prices always rise in the summer)

Mike

[busypaws]

Delayed EOC. You don't want to shut the engine off since it is still not up to temp and you still can't feel your fingers after you scraped ice. Different from computer running car richer. Your normal EOC into a stop light in the summer you don't do in the winter.

[rbrowning]

One reason is that with snow or ice covered roads you may not be able to safely cruise at the ideal speed for FE.

You also see more idling (creeping along) even on the freeways due to accidents. Monday we had a little snow and our county had 73 reported accidents, and we are a rural county.