The first bar depicts the fuel consumed to maintain a constant speed of 80 km/h. The middle bar represents the fuel consumed to vary a vehicle’s speed between 75 and 85 km/h every 18 seconds. The rightmost bar highlights the amount of fuel used to vary the speed between 75 and 85 km/h every 12 seconds. In all cases, the average speed was 80 km/h. Speed variations caused fuel use to increase by 20% in the 18 second test and 48% in the 12 second test.
The green line represents the amount of fuel necessary to accelerate gradually over a distance of 300 metres, and the red line represents the increased amount of fuel used to accelerate rapidly over the same distance.