While sales of new cars may be slumping as motorists tighten their purse strings, research from a car hire company suggests that driving a new car, coupled with some straightforward driving techniques could actually save drivers more than £800 a year.
Europcar conducted an economy run this autumn in an effort to not only prove the official MPG figures provided by manufacturers can be beaten, but that driving a new car is cheaper than using an older vehicle.
It took 11 different sized cars around a 125-mile circuit of the M25. Eight of the cars were from the Europcar fleet and were therefore less than a year old, while the remaining three were older and ranged from three- to 10 years old.
The eight new cars achieved a 14 per cent improvement over the combined fuel economy figures published by the Vehicle Certification Agency, with an average fuel consumption of 62.12mpg. Meanwhile, the three older cars enjoyed a three per cent improvement overall.
Surprisingly, it was the smaller cars that found it difficult to exceed the MPG figures advertised. A new Volvo V50 Geartronic, for example, achieved 58.23mpg – a 44 per cent improvement over its published figures; a Nissan Qashqai DCi achieved 70.33mpg, a 30 per cent improvement; and a Peugeot 308 HDi 90 achieved 95.91mpg, using just £7.24 of fuel on the 125-mile run.
Comparing old to new, the average fuel usage for cars in the Europcar fleet was just nine pence per mile, whereas the older cars averaged 14 pence per mile. This equates to a 31 per cent saving in fuel costs with the newer cars. From an environmental perspective, this means the newer cars emitted almost 34 per cent less carbon on average.
Tim Bailey, spokesman for Europcar, said: “With an average of 500 miles per rental, at today’s fuel rates, a Europcar customer could save £21.18 per rental on fuel and produce around 15,000 fewer grams of carbon.
“If you look at the miles driven each year by customers in our cars and assume they use our cars rather than older cars and drove economically, the saving they achieved was over £30 million. This is clearly a strong argument for renting a car rather than using an older model.”
