How much gas does a car air conditioner take? I heard it uses up a lot, is it really that much?

It uses less fuel than driving with all windows rolled down.
An AC compressor uses about 10 horsepower.

Depends on the vehicle, but nowadays it will impact your mileage by 1MPG or less..

You’ll make more impact on your mileage by keeping your trunk clean of debris, driving 55 and changing your air filter as prescribed by the manufacturer..

Good Luck
ED

i try not to use it .i find i go thru alot of gas that way.also try to keep it at its lowest setting ,like warmer instead of cooler .i found that it helps !

If your a/c needs to be recharged, do it. It will cost you perhaps $25 for a kit that comes with instructions to do it yourself. If you know someone familiar with cars that you can get to help you, do so. It will make you feel accomplished. When the system is charged, it reduces your gas mileage by 2-3 mpg. if you have an efficient 4-cylinder car it might reduce it by 4 mpg at most. An 8 cylinder car, and you won’t even notice, since it’s already sucking up so much gas, and making so much power that the a/c is a negligible drain.
On the other hand, if you don’t get it charged and try to use it, it will either A. Not work at all and suck up that amount of gas, B. Break (unlikely unless it’s an older kind) or C.Not get very cold and suck up twice as much gas as it would when charged(this is most likely).

It’s not as much as the car having a major drag from the windows being down…either way its going to use gas, but if you put it on the vent and turn the air up, the blow motor will run but it will use less gas, bad news is it won’t get THAT cool inside so I cool the car down and then do that, as long as the compressor isn’t running then it won’t use gas. I’d try that.

if its a new car and the a.c. needs to be recharged already something is wrong with the car. hope you have a good warenty. well if its new the dealership should take care of ya. since you don’t like the heat go ahead and use the a.c. after you get it fixed. with the new cars it should not use that much more gas. it all depends on how and where u drive also. keep the maintenance up on the car and you should do fine. best of luck………..the american haitian censation……..lol

no it wont….you do burn more with the air drag on the car from keeping the windows rolled down….so my suggestion recharge it and keep cool this summer….and watch your temperature gauge….good luck

Whenever I’ve driven newer rental cars, I’ve seen fuel economy drop by 20% or more when I use the air conditioning a lot. So running A/C is like paying 20% more for gas. I don’t know what people are talking about when they say “it only adds 1 MPG”… maybe to a Hummer!

But hey, try it yourself. It’s fairly easy to figure out your fuel economy. Fill your tank all the way everytime. How many miles did you drive since last fill-up? How much gas did you add this time? Divide one by the other, voila, MPG! Check it and experiment. Drive a tankful with no A/C, then another tankful using A/C normally. Does your economy get worse?

Approx 1 Km/Liter.

Well as soon as you turn the ac on, no matter what the ac power is, it consumes the same exact thing. if you only roll the driver’s side window then you will be saving yourself some gas. i have an SUV and i tested this whole thing, turns out my ac consumes about 2 miles out of 25 miles .. which is pretty worth it.