Part of my job with the State was to answer inquiries such as these from other agencies and from the public. This is snake oil, my friends. There is no sceret device/addative you can add on to your engine or add to your gas to get better fuel economy. There really is no real conspiracy here between the oil companies and the manufacturers. That mythbuster TV show tested this and found a slight decrease in fuel economy (as a scientist would expect). We tested several of these in very sophisticated laboratories with very rigorous test methods and found only one device ever to help. That was a vacuum bleed device that worked on older carburated cars that were running too rich. We (along with the USEPA) never found any addative to increase fuel economy. A few like MTBE and ethanol did reduce pollution in a certain % of the fleet, but there was a cost associated with them also. I would not recommend them either. All that fuel addative junk you see in the parts stores is also worthless, especially now that we all have the ethanol blend that is about as high detergent as you can get. |