The global automotive industry is racing to become more eco-friendly; there’s no doubt about that. Carmakers worldwide are constantly releasing newer models with even lower emissions and higher mileage than before, all in the pursuit of that goal. On top of that, several big names are also competing with each other to produce all-electric cars, which most people consider to be the ultimate eco-friendly solution.

While everyday Malaysian car buyers like you and I would surely love to be more environmentally friendly, not many of us can afford an all-electric car, let alone any of the hybrid models that are already available locally.

So, does that mean we can’t do our part to save the environment? Of course not! Even with the combustion-engine vehicles that we already own, there are several steps we can take to reduce our carbon footprint.

In this article, we’re going to explore a few ways that you can maximise the eco-friendliness of the vehicle that you already own and drive. With these steps, we can do our part to be friendlier to our planet starting from today!

Let’s get started.

1.Service Your Car Regularly

Believe it or not, one of the best things that you can do to maximise your car’s eco-friendliness is to make sure that you get it serviced regularly. By keeping your vehicle in good shape, you’ll ensure that the car operates at full efficiency and generates fewer emissions.

But how does servicing your car help?

Well, think about what happens when you get your car serviced. For starters, you’ll get your engine oil changed while replacing your air and oil filters as well. On top of that, you may even change your spark plugs and have your tyres inspected.

Together, all of those maintenance tasks combine to ensure that your car operates at the highest fuel efficiency possible. As a result, your well-maintained car won’t burn fuel unnecessarily, helping to minimise its overall carbon emissions.

2.Buy Better Tyres

Switching over to an all-electric vehicle might be too costly, but you can also choose to invest in better tyres instead!

Firstly, let’s go into a bit more detail about your tyres’ role in all of this. Remember: your car tyres are how your engine’s power gets transmitted to the ground underneath to push your car forward. They are quite literally ‘where the rubber meets the road’.

Suppose you’re using low-quality tyres, or perhaps even under-inflated tyres. Those tyres will put up much more resistance and force your engine to work even harder to push your car forward.

Using higher-quality, more eco-friendly tyres, instead, will offer lower rolling resistance to your car. That means that your engine will burn less fuel to generate enough power to move your car forward!

The bottom line? You guessed it. Less fuel burned means less harmful emissions, making your car much more eco-friendly.

3.Pre-plan Your Routes

Usually, we know exactly where we’re headed when we jump in our cars. With just a little bit of preparation, we can pre-plan our journey to ensure we take the most eco-friendly route possible.

That doesn’t just mean taking the shortest route possible. It also means avoiding places where we know there’ll be traffic jams. You see, being stuck in a traffic jam means that our cars will sit idle in traffic for extended periods, wasting fuel and polluting the environment unnecessarily.

For our daily commutes to university or the office, we can also pre-plan our journeys’ timing. Quite often, leaving just a few minutes earlier than usual will save us from the long morning jams on our way to the office!

Still, if pre-planning your routes sounds like too much work, don’t worry! In 2021, we don’t even have to do it all by ourselves. Instead, we can make use of navigational apps like Waze and plenty of others. These apps provide us with real-time traffic information and guide us to drive on the most efficient roads available.

4.Empty Your Boot

Quite often, we tend to carry more weight in our car than we should. Extra weight results in lower fuel efficiency, which isn’t so good for the environment. So, you might want to go through your car to find things that don’t need to be there.

Typically, people load up the boot of their car with a lot of unnecessary items. Things like golf clubs, tools, and luggage are just some everyday items that sit in your car longer than they should.

Some people go to extreme lengths to lighten their cars by removing seats and other unnecessary parts of the interior. They usually do that to lighten their vehicles for racing purposes, though, so you don’t have to go to that extreme.

Instead, all you have to do is focus on removing unnecessary items that add a lot of weight. Just by taking that small step, you’ll be able to lighten the load in your car and allow it to drive much more efficiently.

5.Adopt Eco-Friendly Driving Habits

Another way of making your car more eco-friendly is to change the way that you operate the vehicle. A brilliant thing to do would be re-evaluating our driving habits and eliminating anything that isn’t good for the environment.

For starters, try to avoid accelerating or decelerating aggressively. Instead, you can accelerate to a comfortable speed whenever necessary before cruising at a steady pace throughout most of your journey. 

As you do that, you’ll give your car a chance to use fuel more efficiently. Once your vehicle is already in motion and has gained inertia, your engine won’t have to do so much work to keep it moving forward.

6.Final Thoughts

Automakers are continually improving the eco-friendliness of the cars they produce. While it might not be practical for many Malaysian drivers to buy a new car every few years, this article has shown that there are plenty of steps we can take to improve the eco-friendliness of the vehicles we already have.

So, let’s put these steps into practice and do our part for the environment!

To learn more about cars, motorsports, and the automotive world in general, check out the website for TOC Automotive College, the best automotive college in Malaysia.