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The $7.6 Billion dollar tire inflation gauge: Inflate your tires to save money and the environmentImagine you found a way to fairly effortlessly save $7.6 Billion every year, and reduce 52 billion lbs of CO2. You would be pretty happy right? Well this is what I stumbled upon this morning.
I’ll admit to not being so religious about car maintenance, but this morning I was motivated enough to try out a handy little Brookstone Digital tire gauge that I received as a stocking stuffer last year. (MSRP $20). I tested the tires on the ‘99 Subaru Outback I share with my girlfriend, and was fairly shocked. Our tires, despite looking perfectly normal, are over 8 PSI under-inflated! Using some data from the EPA, I did some calculations showing that if we were better about keeping our tires properly inflated, we could save 266 lbs of CO2, 14 gallons of gasoline, and about $35 each year. All this for about 2 minutes once a month. As if this wasn’t enough, I extrapolated to the number of US cars (220 Million), and came up with the $7B, 52 billion lbs of CO2 number. The impact is tremendous, both in terms of climate change and money saved. I’ve posted the excel sheet I used to do my calculations. You can download it here. Feel free to share it with friends. You may be surprised that a little tire maintenance will easily pay back your investment in a nice tire gauge in one year, and save you money going forward. Of course awareness and motivation is part of the problem. In 2008, passenger cars will be mandated to have low tire pressure warning lights. In the meantime, dust off that gauge and get to checking! Comments
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Interesting... I have the tire warning light but I'm checking today anyway.
Thanks!
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Can you post the source where you found this info? You mentioned the EPA, but there was an article you ran across, too?
Thanks!
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At Priuschat.com, some of the members are putting 40 lbs of pressure in their tires to increase mileage.
I did it on my wife's Prius. The ride is indistinguishable from 32 labs. I can not vouch for the mileage, I do not drive the car. But it seems that she is now getting 51 plus, where she was getting 47 plus before.
The tires can take it.
Let's save some gas, and CO2.
Gordon
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Keeping your tires inflated to the car manufacturer's recommendations is great for fuel efficiency (and safety), but my mechanic pointed out that overinflation has a negative effect on the life of the car suspension and steering components.
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Overinflating tires decreases tracking and road grip under high speeds, in wet or less than optimal road conditions.
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Try to find a way to check the accuracy of your tire gauge, whether mechanical or digital. I bought a digital and thinking my tires were low, added too much air. My mechanical gauge agreed with the tire dealer's gauge and the gas station guage, but the digital gauge read a 9 pound pressure reading difference from all the others. So which one is correct? But more pressure does improve milage, balanced against ride, road noise, road traction, etc.
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A good adjunct to the gauge is to get tire caps that indicate when the pressure has gone down in the tire. There are ones with LEDs that REALLY get your attention (they sell them on amazon) and other ones that just show red when the pressure decreases: I found them here: http://www.autobarn.net/kle44444.html
This way you know when to refill your tires without having to get out the gauge, and my guess is one's more likely to remember when your tires tell you.
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If we all inflated our tires with CO2, would the amount sequestered, affect Global Warming?
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Nope.
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