not always this is true: it clearly depends from how steep the downhill is. For example, if you are downhill on a motorway and you go engine-braking, you duh… brake. Even if you don’t use fuel for that fraction of time, your engine brakes, and you will still end up using the gear you are in to regain speed, because in motorways there have not such steep downhills. Where I live there is a motorway with such a long (over 10 km) downhill that I could do in neutral from the beginning at 120-130 km/h, and arriving at the end of it at 110. Sure it will cost me some fuel idling (and how much 5 minutes idling would cost?), but with engine braking you just wouldn’t do it. I now have a car with cruise control and I don’t care, but before I didn’t and learned these things. If you live in a mountain zone knowing when to accelerate, when to engine brake and where you can go downhill coasting (which can also be done simply pulling the clutch were you can). A word regarding safety: I am talking about a straight motorway with probably 2 very sweet and large radius turns, mostly empty.
If you need to stop: Coast in gear. If you have to keep going: Coast in neutral. If you really want your mpg to skyrocket. Coast with the engine off
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not always this is true: it clearly depends from how steep the downhill is.
For example, if you are downhill on a motorway and you go engine-braking, you duh… brake.
Even if you don’t use fuel for that fraction of time, your engine brakes, and you will still end up using the gear you are in to regain speed, because in motorways there have not such steep downhills. Where I live there is a motorway with such a long (over 10 km) downhill that I could do in neutral from the beginning at 120-130 km/h, and arriving at the end of it at 110. Sure it will cost me some fuel idling (and how much 5 minutes idling would cost?), but with engine braking you just wouldn’t do it.
I now have a car with cruise control and I don’t care, but before I didn’t and learned these things. If you live in a mountain zone knowing when to accelerate, when to engine brake and where you can go downhill coasting (which can also be done simply pulling the clutch were you can).
A word regarding safety: I am talking about a straight motorway with probably 2 very sweet and large radius turns, mostly empty.
If you need to stop: Coast in gear.
If you have to keep going: Coast in neutral. If you really want your mpg to skyrocket. Coast with the engine off