This is the very first installment of the Truth or Troubled section where we take common activities and habits that seem green and test them to find out whether or not they help combat climate change. I touched on this earlier with my  Green driving Tips article.

One of the main factors that this conception deals with is the large variety of vehicles and respective set ups, while one car may rev the rpms higher when the car is in gear as opposed to neutral another may be even. Also a large difference is whether the auto is manual or automatic.A lot of other things such as idling rpms and gear ratios have a lot to do with the effectiveness of neutral.

Automatic cars for the most part have the same RPM  while the engine is idling in neutral or in drive therefore no gas savings. There is also talk that driving in Neutral is illegal (Presumably because you can’t control the vehicle as much) although I have never heard of any one getting in trouble for this or how they could get caught. With automatics switching from drive to neutral is a lot less fluid then in a standard and could take longer to react in an emergency. Since there is little to no gas consumption difference in modern automatic cars this conception would have to be ruled as troubled.

Manual transmissions behave much differently when shifting between gear and neutral. Standards give the driver a much greater control over how much gas the car uses. Using Neutral at the proper times; slowly rolling to a red light, coasting down long hills and large safe low grade straightaways can take the engine out of the equation for short periods of time using your momentum and gravity instead to produce speed. Obviously when you make the engine work less you use less gas. Since manual drivers are used to switching gears all the time going from neutral to the proper gear is reactionary and very unlikely to be the reason for an accident. Proper use gear ratios (going 35-40 Kph in 3rd gear uses approx. 20% less gas then in 2nd gear)  and effectively timed “coasting” can produce a significant gas savings, especially when compared to an automatic equivalent. For these reasons using neutral in a manual car has to be classified as truth.

Verdict:  Tuthled …I guess, Automatics are troubled and manual speaks true…