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[doug4293]

will i get better miles per gallon if i drive the car without cruise control, or with it on ?

[o-meg-a]

it's dependent on the drive..
I would say from experience that over a long distance motorway journey, if you can control yourself and your speed manually, you will get better mpg.

The problem comes with the constant change of speed and accelerations and decelerations of using your right foot to do the work.
The cruise control will help that side of things, but will not be the most efficient means of control.

Ideally, when driving long distance, there is a fine balance between too much and too little throttle to maintain speed.
You dont want to be accelerating up hill, and you dont want to be losing too much momentum.

I think that if you can control yourself and be very self aware when driving, you will most definitely get better MPG manually.

[dad1uk]

Around town I find it better without cruise control. One thing I have found is if you spend most of the time under 35mph then my car gives better mph if you don't use 5th gear.

[Jimbob]

you CAN do better yourself.

I find it does better though, as it keeps my speed down, which has a tendancy to creep up and up when driving manually.

I only ever use it on motorways myself

[Kevin Wood]

It's the same engine and the same car burning the same fuel so the difference will be too little to worry about.

Most drivers don't relentlessly glue themselves to a constant speed like cruise control does, they allow the car to slow slightly climbing hills and speed up slightly descending them, which is more economical than maintaining speed at all costs. On an auto cruise can often cause the transmission to downshift when a driver could have avoided it.

So yes, by driving carefully you can do better. The problem I find is that my speed drifts up to less economical levels if I am not paying enough attention.

Kevin

[tunnie]

yes and no, hills for example, with cruise mine is usually set at 80ish, if driving without cruise on your foot stays in same place, and you may loose 5mph going up a hill. Cruise will open throttle more so you maintain 80 up the hill.

But over the course of a long run I think its better as you don't accidentally drift up to a higher speed

[jimac]

Well, I don't have cruise on my Omega (yet) but I had it on my previous 4 cars (2 X-Type 2.5s, a Jeep 3.0 and a Volvo V40) and in my experience cruise will give better mpg on long motorway cruises.  It will use finer control over the throttle to maintain speed than you could do with your right foot, although it will always maintain speed up hills but the flip side of that is it will definitely ease off going down.

You can see the effect if you switch to the instantaneous mpg readout while using your foot or cruise.  You should see it being much more consistent on cruise.

Jim.