Everybody wants to know the ways they can save one of the most gas. Although there are products around that will allegedly help with this, a lot of that is not accurate. Hypermiling is one thing that is scientific. Coasting in neutral is not the very same thing or even correlated with effective hypermiling reports Popular Mechanics. It is also very dangerous to do. Article resource - Coasting when in neutral is dangerous and does not save gas by Car Deal Expert.

Coasting in neutral disables the accelerator

You can't accelerate to keep away from road hazards when coasting in neutral. Being in neutral also prevents you from getting around sharp corners. This is since the engine is disconnected from the drive train at that time.

Trying to save gas?

It doesn't make any sense that gas can be saved when in neutral. Each hour you leave your car running, one gallon of gas is used in it. Considering that, going down a hill that is a mile long at 30 mph can be about .033 gallons used.

There is nevertheless rpm

From idle to full throttle, an oscilloscope shows the pulse-width-modulated wave signal to be between 5 and 8 percent. More fuel is used with more rpm which goes up with percentage. The idle rpm is around 1,000 rpm when in neutral. Of course your car may be a little different. At that point, the car's fuel injection starts adding fuel to keep the engine from stalling out. The driver feels a rev up at the very same moment a pulse increases on the oscilloscope. According to Popular Mechanics, this shows that really, gas is just getting used when it doesn't have to be.

The trip computer getting tricked

When a car is in neutral, the trip computer sees something different than what is happening. Because you are coasting, your computer sees a "false positive" of mileage changing. That's why gallons into the tank divided by odometer mileage (and checked against a handheld GPS device) are more useful when analyzing fuel economy. Sitting in neutral is worse than simply turning off your vehicle at a red light reports Popular Mechanics.

More on this topic

Popular Mechanics

popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/repair/coasting-in-neutral-fuel-economy

A "gravity hill" in Chenju, South Korea

youtube.com/watch?v=yBXjwnc51Pc