I’m starting off on a new series called Frugal Driving.

The recent petrol price increase to RM2.70 per litre will have a cascading effect on the Malaysian economy. Some say that it’s good for us in the long term, but in the short term many of us are feeling the aftershocks.The Frugal Driving series aims to explore what we frugal beagles can do to save money in our transportation expenses.

The first post of this series observes how we can save petrol by driving like taxi drivers.

I admit that Malaysian taxi drivers have a bad reputation. There are many undesirable incidents that have been highlighted in the media, and I’m sure some of you have your own horror stories to share.

However, there are some positive things to learn from these drivers who spend all day on the road.

Here are some of the ways we can save petrol, and save money by driving like taxi drivers:

Tips to Save Petrol:

1. Slow Starts

The next time you need to stop on the road, either at a junction or traffic lights, observe how taxi drivers accelerate. They accelerate at a gradual, steady rate.

Tip: Accelerating suddenly, or jack rabbit starts will burn more petrol because you are using a lot of energy to get your car moving.

2. No Speeding

Try driving behind a taxi on a long stretch of road or a highway. You will notice that they don’t drive very fast, and keep to a certain speed limit.

Tip: When you go above a certain speed limit, your car starts to face heavy wind resistance. This threshold will depend on your car’s aerodynamics, but generally anything over 80 km/h means you are using up extra petrol just to overcome wind resistance, in addition to moving your car forward.

Driving below the speed limit also saves money indirectly by avoiding traffic summons, and keeping you safe from accidents.

3. Avoid Traffic Jams

Malaysian taxi drivers will sometimes refuse to take you to some destinations if the drivers know that there will be a traffic jam along the way. I have never seen this practice when I take taxis in other countries!

Tip: Traffic jams are terrible for fuel consumption. There’s a lot of starting, stopping, idling and excessive acceleration to prevent others from cutting into your lane.

Take alternative routes to avoid traffic jams, or plan your trip to avoid rush hour traffic.

4. Car Pool

I don’t know if taxi drivers still do this, but when I was younger this always happened to me. I would get on a taxi and the driver would wait for another passenger going in the same general direction. This doubled his profits, because he got paid twice for a single trip!

Tip: When you car pool, you can share petrol costs with someone else.

5. Make Full Use of the Journey

You can’t blame taxi drivers at KLIA for approaching people to make the trip back to the city. They are labeled as touts, but all they want is to make full use of their journey. If they leave KLIA without passengers, they wasting petrol for half the journey.

Tip: Plan ahead so that you make a single round trip, instead of making many individual trips to do different errands.

6. Car Maintenance

Taxis have to go through periodic Puspakom inspections, so taxi drivers must make sure that their cars are in good condition all the time.

Tip: Keep your car in good shape. Service you car regularly, keep your car tyres properly inflated, and use the correct fuel. A well maintained car will improve your petrol mileage.

7. Switch to Natural Gas

Many taxis have installed natural gas tanks. You can spot the NGV sticker at the back of the car, and you can see that most of the cars queuing up at natural gas pumps are taxis.

Tip: It may be a worthwhile investment, since natural gas is much cheaper than petrol. The only disadvantages: It takes up a lot of boot space, and you can’t find many petrol stations selling natural gas.

Conclusion

Taxi drivers are masters at saving petrol, because their profit margins depend on it. There is a lot we can learn by just watching the way they drive.

Do you have an observation to add? Discuss in the comments section.

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