Fuel Economy of Cars in Pakistan

What is the fuel economy of cars in Pakistan?

Does the idea of buying your next car make you sweat? With so many options and rising fuel prices, you have every right to be concerned! Depending on how much you will drive the new car, you can be looking at huge cost savings with a car that gives 23 kilometers per liter (kpml) of petrol instead of one that gives 7 kilometers per liter.

Switching from a car that gives 7kmpl to a car that gives 21kmpl means that if you spent Rs. 30,000 per month on fuel, you will now only spend Rs. 10,000, saving you Rs. 20,000 per month! Now that’s a saving we can all get behind.

Therefore, we at SaveJoules decided to make it easier for you to pick your next car. Sounds nice, right?! Not for us, unfortunately. 🙂

Data collection was haaaaarrrd! Many car manufacturers do report fuel consumption figures from their testing. But most of them do not represent the reality of city driving in Pakistan and other third world countries.

So, there’s no objective way for us to gather the numbers on a car’s fuel economy or mileage until we have government sanctioned test laboratories available for Pakistani driving conditions. But, thankfully, we do have a community of Pakwheelers who are ever so ready to report numbers on their car’s fuel consumption on thousands of forum posts.

Thank you, Pakwheels!

We decided to gather the data that the Pakwheels community has willingly provided for each of the common car models since we do believe this data is better than the manufacturer reported numbers. Pakwheels data is specifically for Pakistani driving conditions: the frequent start-and-stop of city traffic, the pot-holes in the road, or that one Uncle who decides to drive the wrong-way, making you slam the brakes. All of these impact the fuel economy of cars in Pakistan and even affect our driving style and habits. 

Now on to the exciting part: the data collection. Most people in Pakistan buy used cars, like anywhere in the world. Many people are still driving cars that are 30 years old! We have the usual Suzuki FX, Toyota Corolla, Daihatsu Charade, Honda Civic, Suzuki Khyber and, of course, Pakistan’s favorite: Suzuki Mehran a.k.a Mehru.

The sheer age and range of cars stumped us for quite a bit because it meant digging through a lot more Pakwheels blogs and forums post than we had imagined.

Finally, although we collected data of the past 20 years, we decided to only present the data for the last 5 years of car models. Cracking our fingers, we decided to investigate the most common car models including the imported Japanese cars.

Generally, Pakistan’s weather is hot and air-conditioning in the car is a necessity. So we collected fuel consumption numbers for cars in city traffic with their AC on. This would help establish a baseline. For each of the models, we then collected reported fuel efficiencies from multiple users and averaged them out.

Sadly, there was no change in fuel economies of cars in Pakistan in the past 5 years. To be honest, there was not much of a change compared to the previous models of the same cars over the last decade or more. The only change came with new energy efficient car models, especially hybrid cars, entering the market.

Digging through tons of forums also increased our personal understanding of the new cars market in Pakistan, well, some that we even expected. For example, hybrid cars do actually perform WAY better than conventional petrol engines. For instance, compare a Toyota Prius, with 23 kmpl with a Toyota Corolla’s 10 kmpl. And Toyota hybrid cars, like Prius and Aqua, perform significantly better than Honda hybrid cars, like Vezel and Freed.

But there are also some conventional cars with smaller engines that can give some hybrid cars a run for their money.

Yes, we are looking at you, Mira!

Introduced in a 660 cc engine displacement, ‘Daihatsu Mira’ with its eco-idle function has been keeping its drivers very happy with the average fuel consumption of 19 kmpl in city traffic.

But even on the larger side, surprisingly, Mitsubishi’s recently introduced ‘Mirage’ with its 1000 cc displacement engine isn’t too far off in performance with a staggering 17 kmpl.

Now, we aren’t saying that the numbers we are reporting are written in stone. There were of course deviations but most reported numbers generally were quite close to the averages we have calculated. For example, nobody reported extraordinary numbers like 18 kmpl for a Toyota Corolla, rather the numbers generally fell within a range of 9-12 kmpl. There were some factors that changed the values above and below a certain average:

1. You like to really rev up your engine which can hurt your fuel economy.
2. It’s your bad luck that you always find a traffic jam whenever you leave work, and your car just sits there gulping down fuel.
3. You have faulty parts and don’t regularly service your car which can negatively affect the efficiency of your car.
4. You idle your car frequently with the AC on.
5. You don’t check your tire’s pressure.

Also, those car models which have an Eco/Econ/Economy mode, will give much better fuel economy when the Eco Mode is used. Highway driving will also raise fuel economy dramatically compared to city driving.

So, how many of you are going to look at the car’s fuel economy when making your final purchase decision? And what is the fuel consumption of your current car?

To learn more ways to reduce your gas, electricity and petrol bills, follow our SaveJoules Facebook Page. To compare home and office appliances by energy consumption and buy the most energy efficient appliances, visit our website, SaveJoules.com.

(Today’s blog post is written by my hardworking righthand, Osama Rizwan, who collected all the data from Pakwheels).