Driving From SG to KL & Back on One Tank of Fuel?

With sky high fuel prices, and a society that places a great emphasis on efficiency and environmental consciousness, car makers are scrambling to equip their vehicles with technology that promise to lower their overall consumption.

The trend today is for manufacturers to introduce PHEV variants of their hot sellers. Raiding their EV parts bin for components to massive improve their ICE cars’ economy is a strategy that is sure to pay off; the easiest way to ensure you reduce your petrol bill is to offer your car an alternative method of propulsion.

But this is not a strategy that’d work for all types of vehicles. And whilst effective, there are drawbacks to this approach too. For starters, you introduce a lot of additional complexity to a car’s powertrain. And when the battery is completely flat, you’d be lugging around several hundred kilograms of what effectively is dead weight.

Which makes the VAG strategy all the more admirable. See, the claimed efficiency figures are not only achievable in reality, the car manages to do so fairly effortlessly too. So then, how exactly does it do it?

Heading up North

Our chariot for this little experiment is the latest iteration of Skoda’s Octavia Combi. Now in its fourth generation, it received its mid-life facelift last year, though you’d not find a lot of differences cosmetically.

The most obvious visual difference is the inclusion of new headlights, though Skoda says the bumpers have both been redesigned. The most significant change, however, is under the bonnet. Gone is the previous generation’s 1.0 litre engine, and in its place was the original 1.5 litre unit the car was originally launched with. Only this time, it has been made Category A COE compliant.

With the tank brimmed in Tuas, the car worked out that it’d be able to cover a theoretical 780 kilometres on a full tank. We wanted to keep this drive realistic, so this meant making stops as you would on a regular road trip, whilst obeying the road speed limits and with the aircon running.

We crossed into Malaysia via Second Link, and headed to our first stop on the trip. And in typical paddleshift style, it involved a kart track of some sort. This time, it was RUD’s outlet at Sutera Mall, a 35-kilometre trek from the border.

From there, we set off once again, this time bound for Port Dickson and in time for dinner. This leg of the drive would be about 270 kilometres in total, a distance that the car covered effortlessly. The seats offered sufficient support without being overdone, ensuring we were kept in total comfort whilst on the drive.

By now the sun had well and truly set. But the remaining 100 or so kilometres proved to be little trouble for the Octavia, as its Matrix LED headlights offered superior illumination on even the darkest stretches of the Malaysian highway network.

Pulling up at our first hotel of the trip, the car covered an indicated 410 kilometres, and impressively only lost one of its eight bars of fuel, with an average of 21 km/l.

KL’s Traffic Wreaks Havoc

On Day Two, we were told to head to yet another track – this time at City Karting’s new location at Kuala Selangor. It may have been a Saturday, but traffic was still fairly heavy leaving KL. The mild hybrid bit of the powertrain must have been working overtime here, as we spent quite a large portion of our time in stop-start traffic.

Once we were freed from KL traffic, the car quickly clawed back its efficiency, barely burning any fuel at all on this 70+ kilometre drive. In blistering heat (the in-car thermometer displayed 36 degrees external temperature), it made the return trip, keeping us cool in the car. Still, the overall consumption here was quite high as a result of the aforementioned factors, losing us another bar of fuel.

We then headed to Monkeys Canopy Resort once again, to let our trip mates sample LYL Karting Circuit. But the traffic from KLCC to the resort was the worst that we’ve ever experienced. With two consecutive traffic lights malfunctioning around the general Twin Towers area, we spent one hour in start-stop traffic, burning up even more precious fuel as we attempted to navigate out of the chaos.

And the hilly terrain and heavy evening rush hour traffic further sealed out fate – we weren’t going to be winning any efficiency awards. Though at least the cooler temperatures meant that we could enjoy the car’s included moonroof.

We ended Day 2 off having consumed three bars of fuel, leaving us with just three bars left to make the return trip home.

We Had To Fill Up

With an indicated 320 kilometres of range left on the third day, we knew we had to fill up. But we wanted to see just how little fuel we could use on the trip overall, so we opted to only add 10 litres of fuel.

On the longer stretches the car proritises coasting, shutting off its engine for seconds on end in a bid to burn less fuel. The hubs, tyres and undercarriage aerodynamics must have also been optimised for efficiency, as you’d be shocked at how much momentum the car could preserve after you’ve gotten off the throttle.

Having half a litre of additional capacity means you have a wider window of torque to work with too. And this should in turn lower fuel consumption even further, as you can use less revs to produce the same amount of torque as a more highly strung and heavily boosted engine.

An often-overlooked part of an efficient car is its ability to carry momentum into a corner. There’s no use having a car that barely burns any fuel whilst going in a straight line, but then has to scrub all its speed just to make it round a bend. The MQB Evo platform allows you to carry some serious pace into a corner, with the chassis and suspension allowing you to really preserve every last km/h of speed off-throttle.

In Conclusion

It may not have a large hybrid battery pack, or even a powerful enough electric motor to haul its own body. But Skoda shows that you can build a car that sips fuel without the need for excessive amounts of electrification.

Clever optimisations and a car that is happy to maintain speed regardless of the terrain means you’d naturally burn less petrol without much of a sacrifice. The Combi version of the Octavia is also ludicriously practical, its cavernous 640 litre boot swallowing anything we could throw at it.

All in all, we clocked around 1,000 kilometres on one full tank plus 10 litres of fuel. The trip computer displays an average consumption of about 18.8 km/l, and this was done driving normally and through some truly horrendous traffic.

It is a car that you can truly consider if you are seeking something ultra-efficient – but don’t want the additional headache of electric motors and battery packs!