Wasteful wolf in thrifty sheep’s clothing amid fuel price hikes

MANILA, Philippines–The dream may be coming to an end. What began some months ago as successive drops in the price of all types of fuel, brought about by an oversupply of oil in the global market, seem to have hit rock-bottom. And what’s the saying about things falling to such record lows?

So, before the public starts thinking that low pump prices are here to stay, and it’s “happily ever after driving” from now on, it’s high time to nip the fuel-burning habits in the bud and bust driving myths before the eventual storm of fuel price increases come.

At least, that was the underlying idea behind the Shell FuelSave Fact or Fiction Driving Challenge held Feb. 11. For this event, 12 participants divided into two teams were given a one-day “crash” course on the six myths of fuel-efficient driving, creatively embedded into a series of driving challenges from the starting point in Manila (beside Quirino Grandstand) to Clark, Pampanga, and back.

To spice up the competition, there was the driving challenge’s defending champion celebrity Bianca Gonzales serving as the “unreachable star.” This writer, along with four other scribes and one representative from Shell North Luzon, formed the media team and went head-to-head with Bianca and the Shell Eco-marathon students from five universities.

The task was simple enough: Use the least amount of fuel during the day, keeping in mind to avoid the driving myths and bad habits that cause more fuel burn that necessary.

Each team was given three Honda vehicles to drive (two team members per vehicle), and the driver and navigator were instructed to undergo a series of challenges in five pit stops at different Shell stations (UN Avenue, Manila; Balintawak, Quezon City; NLEx Balagtas, Bulacan; and NLEx Guiguinto, Bulacan) and one Honda dealership (San Fernando, Pampanga). The losing team in each pit stop was meted the corresponding consequence.

This author and teammate Mika Fernandez David of Gadgets Magazine were given a white Honda City, a compact sedan with a high batting average in fuel economy ratings.

The mid-morning drive from Manila to the Balintawak-NLEx entry was hampered by heavy traffic, as expected. Despite that, the digital read out for the fuel run was a respectable 14 to 16 kilometers per liter.

At NLEx, we found the “sweet spot” speed—the most fuel efficient highway speed—at 80 kph, and yielded more than 21 kpl.

The drive was just half the job. Perhaps the more nerve-wracking segments happened along the five pit stops. The first one, in Shell UN Avenue, Manila, tested the participants’ knowledge of car tools. The media team lost, and as a consequence, each of the three cars were loaded with a 25-kilo sack of rice and a filled-up ice box, both of which stayed in the vehicles for the duration of the challenge.

The second pit stop, which the media team won handily, required speed in uploading videos to Instagram. Bianca’s team now had to accommodate three supersized bouncers—one in each car.

The third pit stop in Balagtas, Bulacan combined mental and physical challenges that called for team members to fill in the blanks and carry jerricans of water. The media team won this one. As a result, Bianca’s team was ordered to drive their three cars with air-conditioning on maximum, and with all the windows open until the fourth pit stop at the Honda dealership in San Fernando, Pampanga. So far, so good, the score being 2-1 in the media team’s favor.

The fourth pit stop required team members to create banana milkshakes. The media team won this round, and the punishment on Bianca’s team for losing was that their three cars were left running on idle for a full 10 minutes before they could proceed to the next pit stop—a devastating consequence, and the media team thought the crown was in the bag.

Then the disastrous final pit stop happened. At the Shell-NLEx Guiguinto, Bulacan, the teams’ knowledge of road habits were put in the wringer. As participants sorted out which habits were “fact” or “fiction” as far as efficient driving was concerned, Bianca’s team emerged on top. As a consequence, the media team’s three vehicles were revved to 3,000 revolutions per minute while stationary for three minutes. The “unreachable star” exceeded.

Despite knowing that the media team won in three of the five challenges, the announcement of the overall winner was still filled with suspense, as the results of the actual fuel run (via the fuel top-up at Guiguinto) were tallied and computed.

In the end, the media team unseated the defending champs (which Bianca’s team held for almost a year since becoming winners in the Shell FuelSave Celebrity Driving Challenge in February 2014).

More than involving celebrities, students, and media practitioners in a fun-filled driving event, the FuelSave Challenge aimed to raise public awareness and ultimately effect meaningful changes in the everyday driving habits of Pinoy motorists.

The FuelSave Challenge was an eye-opener of sorts, mainly for the new set of studies, particularly of the six fact and fiction report specific to the Philippines, shared by the oil refiner. A nationwide study was conducted in December 2014 by Edelman Berland, an independent global market research firm, using an online questionnaire with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Filipino drivers aged 18 to 40.

The report was also conducted across seven other countries: Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

For the Philippines, key results showed that 92 percent of Filipino drivers believe that fuel efficiency is important, 75 percent of whom said they don’t know how, and 53 percent said that not knowing how causes them anxiety.