Does Shifting Neutral on Downhill Save Fuel?

When you go downhill with your car, if you put the gear in neutral instead of pressing the gas, you will go faster while doing this. you will not waste fuel You may have thought. From the outside, it really looks like a “win-win” system, doesn’t it?

So is that really the case? Does shifting to neutral while going downhill save fuel as expected? Let’s say without going into the content, this is the case. putting your life at risk As if that wasn’t enough, it doesn’t save fuel for most cars.

There are actually two situations here!

On older carburetor-powered cars, neutralizing can save a little bit of fuel, but for most vehicles on the road, putting the gear into neutral on a hill is less likely. We know that it does not save fuel, on the contrary, it increases fuel consumption.

In modern vehicles, as soon as your vehicle senses that it is going downhill, it stops supplying fuel to the engine. Because the acceleration provided by the slope and your previous speed already creates the power to keep the engine running. At this point your engine with little or “no” fuel consumption it is in working order. This fuel cut-off is done by electronic fuel injection operated by the electronic control unit (ECU).

In fact, when you put the gear in neutral, you waste fuel.

When you put the gear in neutral while going downhill in modern vehicles you separate the engine from the wheels. In other words, in order for the engine to continue to run, it must draw as much fuel as it draws at idle. However, if the vehicle was not idle, the acceleration of the wheels on the slope would be transferred to the engine and it would be ensured to continue working without the need for fuel.

In older cars, neutralizing the vehicle while going downhill saves “some” fuel. So for what?

Older generation cars had a carburetor without an intelligent control system. The carburetor, a mechanical device, injected fuel into the engine. Here, the carburetor continues to send fuel according to the engine speed because it does not understand that the vehicle is going downhill. For this reason, according to fuel consumption may be slightly higherHowever, even in old generation cars, driving in gear is necessary for your safety.

Why put your life in danger when going downhill?

So far, we have talked about the effect of putting the gear in neutral on fuel consumption. In fact, there is something more important than fuel consumption: security.

When you take the gear to neutral while going downhill with your vehicle, you disconnect the wheels from the engine. This is the vehicle It accelerates uncontrollably because the resistance necessary to keep the engine running is removed.

This uncontrolled acceleration significantly increases braking distance as well as high speed. Because “engine brake” The power that we call and helps the vehicle to stop completely disappears and we have to rely only on the pads during the braking phase. This also causes the pads to heat up more and the brakes do not hold or hold very little. A scenario where the brakes do not hold while driving at high speed can put your life at risk.

Shifting to neutral can cause you to be slow when instantaneous responses are required.

Let’s imagine that you need to accelerate suddenly while putting your vehicle in neutral and going at high speed. In such a scenario, You need to put the vehicle back into gear. Maybe even that 1 second time difference can cause you to crash. For this reason, it is necessary to continue to drive the vehicle in the “correct gear” at all times.

Today, we talked about the effect of putting the gear in neutral while your vehicle is going downhill on fuel consumption and its safety flaws. If you want more content like this, you can specify in the comments.