Fuel Consumption
It turns out that air conditioning guzzles gasoline! If you're careful about fuel economy and want to maximize your driving range, it's best to keep the A/C off as much as possible. According to Libelle, research indicates that manual air conditioning consumes more fuel on hot days than on cooler ones. On a hot day, the A/C can use up to 12.5% of your fuel. To put that in perspective: with a 70-liter tank, that's 8.75 liters of fuel just for cooling. With automatic climate control, the fuel loss is roughly half that amount.
