Especially the color of the car Differences between light and dark color options, It has a much bigger impact on fuel consumption than we think. Even if a direct effect is not mentioned, not ignoring this indirect effect can save you a lot of money.

Perhaps, like many of us, you haven’t researched this issue. But your car colorIt plays a bigger role than you think in saving fuel while traveling in sunny weather. But how?

How does car color affect fuel consumption?

Fuel consumption depends on the color of the vehicle, Perhaps, when heard, it does not provide logical context for many people. Because the color of the vehicle generally seems to have nothing to do with the fuel of the vehicle, as it is an aesthetic element. However, research in this area has shown that vehicle colors indirectly affect fuel consumption.

For example, Choosing a white car instead of blackThis means that you can achieve a range of 20 kilometers with one tank of fuel. If you drive a vehicle with a large surface area, these savings can be even greater.

When choosing the vehicle color, you can now choose not only based on your taste, but also based on fuel consumption.

You can guess the reason for this: sunlight. Even in the clothes we wear every day, the reflection of sunlight makes a big difference in the feeling of cold and cooling. The same logic actually applies to vehicles. A dark-colored vehicle is exposed to more sunlight than a light-colored vehicle. That’s why, if you’ve noticed, it gets extremely hot in black cars during the summer months.

Although dark-colored vehicles reflect 5% of the sun’s rays This percentage increases to 60% in light-colored specimens. That is a very serious figure!

“What do temperature and fuel have to do with it?” Even if you say…

The outside temperature of the car of course It also affects the internal temperature of the engine block. Tests showed that dark-colored vehicles required 13% more air conditioning to display the same temperature readings. So we can think of it as the outside of our house or our clothes.

temperature from outside, Because it makes the engine compartment warmer Naturally, this has an indirect effect on fuel consumption.

A study on this topic was conducted by researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

According to this study published in the journal Applied Energy Vehicles painted with reflective coatings stay cooler in the sun It has been found that ventilation is easier to achieve a comfortable temperature.

The person who conducted the research Ron Levinson, “Sun-reflective paint, which can lower the air temperature in a vehicle when parked in a sunny parking lot, can increase the vehicle’s fuel economy by allowing the manufacturer to install an air conditioner that is smaller and draws less power from the engine.” say.

As we already know white, silver and other light colors are cool colors that reflect about 60% of sunlight. However, dark, cool colors can also exceptionally keep you cooler.

In the investigation, they parked two identical Honda Civics, borrowed from the California General Services department, in a parking lot.

One of the vehicles was gray and the other was black. The exterior coating of the black and gray vehicles had a solar reflectance of 0.05 and 0.58 respectively. On a sunny day, the vehicles were placed in the sun in similar cycles. Each cycle began with a one-hour wait with the air conditioning turned off, followed by a half-hour cool-down period with the air conditioning turned off at maximum.

The researchers continuously measured the temperature of the roof, ceiling, dashboard, windshield, seat, door, air intake and cabin air in each vehicle, as well as in the parking lot. They also monitored the weather conditions outside. At the peak of the waiting phases of the test, the roof of the gray vehicle was approximately 25°C cooler than the roof of the black vehicle.

Using a vehicle simulation called Advisor, the team also determined the effect of weather conditions on fuel consumption and pollutant emissions.

Between these There was a city loop, a highway loop, a temporary driving loop with increasing and decreasing speed. By combining these simulations with the thermal model results, they found that solar reflective automotive paint saves potential energy for miniaturizing air conditioning.

The results were surprising. Replacing black paint on a vehicle with a cooler colored paint was found to increase fuel economy by 0.24 mpg (1.1%). This means that the power extracted from the engine is reduced due to the use of less air conditioning.

This change also reduces carbon dioxide emissions while it fell by 1.1% other automotive emissions, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons It will decrease by about 0.5%.

So which color uses less fuel?

For this white, gray, yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple, brown and black A ranking can be made as follows.

As you can see, the colors in cars are something that many of us have chosen solely based on our aesthetic tastes. However, if you now choose lighter colors instead of black, fuel consumption will be reduced. increased by almost 2% we have seen. Perhaps we should reconsider the importance of color when purchasing a vehicle. Because sometimes small details can lead to big savings.

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