Does wet road increase fuel consumption?

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asked Feb 26, 2022 in Other-Cars/Transportation by minehiaoseui (1,050 points)
Does wet road increase fuel consumption?

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answered Mar 7, 2022 by McCormik (1,980 points)
A wet road does increase a vehicles fuel consumption because the wet road increases the rolling resistance of the vehicle.

So your vehicle will use slightly more fuel driving on wet or snowy roads but only slightly more fuel.

You should not see a huge decrease in fuel mileage when driving on wet and snowy roads but you will see a slight drop in fuel mileage.

Rolling resistance is the combination of forces that work against the forward motion of your vehicle.

The weight of the vehicle, gravity and inertia, the amount of friction between the tires and the road surface, and air drag all play a part.

The MPG of the vehicle does decrease with age.

The older the vehicle gets the more wear and tear on the engine and other components such as ignition coils, ignition module, spark plugs etc.

This then causes the engine to burn more fuel to cover the same distance.

Although if you maintain the vehicle properly and change spark plugs, spark plug wires, ignition coils, etc then the vehicles MPG should not decrease all that much with age.

No matter how well you take care of your vehicle, it's engine efficiency and power are never as good as when you drive it off the lot.

However, while a product of the miles you've driven, this decrease in efficiency is most likely due to faulty or worn engine components.

A bad fuel injector or dirty/old fuel filter can drastically affect the flow of fuel into the engine.

A fuel system problem is one of the most common causes of poor gas mileage.

The more you run your A/C, the lower gas mileage you will get.

Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration and braking) can lower your gas mileage by roughly 15% to 30% at highway speeds and 10% to 40% in stop-and-go traffic.

Excessive idling decreases MPG.

The EPA city test includes idling, but more idling will lower MPG.

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