Fuel economy has always been a prime consideration among car buyers, but the current cost-of-living crisis has exacerbated its importance. And, with prices predicted to stay high, there has never been a better time to look at reducing consumption.
For some buyers, the way around this will be to switch to an electric car. But of course, that doesn’t work for everyone – for the many car owners in Britain who are without a driveway, for example, or for whom the public charging infrastructure can’t quite deliver the reliability they require.
So for many of us, sticking with petrol or diesel is the only way. And that means hours of combing through facts and figures trying to work out which cars are the most economical.
Except you don’t have to do that, because we’ve done it for you. And below, you’ll find the fruits of our labours – a gathering of the top 10 most fuel-efficient petrol, diesel and hybrid cars you can buy in Britain right now.
We’ve ranked them by their official WLTP combined fuel consumption figures; while these probably won’t accurately reflect what you’ll be able to achieve in the real world, they are at least useful for meaningful comparison, as they’re all obtained under the same set of predefined test conditions.
And we’ve also excluded plug-in hybrids, because while they boast fabulous official figures these are wholly dependent on how much charge they have and, therefore, how often they’re plugged in. Great if you’ve got somewhere to do so – not so much if you haven’t.
So if you haven’t got somewhere to plug in your car, and you are worried about fuel prices and availability in the UK in the future, these are the cars that should be on your list to try: the 10 most economical cars on sale today.