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Leave your lights on, if you ask me.
I have been driving with no daytime driving lights for many years. There has been many times that a driver in a hurry (that's about 98% of the drivers) would, say, start pulling out of a street of driveway and stop at the last second because they didn't see me at first glance. Since I have been driving a 945 with lights that don't turn off for the past two years I have noticed a big difference in being "able to be seen". It only took a month to notice this difference.
Since then I have persuaded family members to turn on their lights while driving and it has become as routine as putting on their seat belts.
The DRL watt-hours could be added up with a little watts loss added from the alternator, easily and converted to BTUs per gallon or something like that. I'll ask my "genius" son, Volvo Boy, to calculate this unless someone beats him to it. I'm not going to look for my old thermal dynamics book. Good question. My guess is that you would loose 1/4 to mile per gallon at the most. I wouldn't care if it was a two MPG loss.
If I said, leave your lights on earlier, I'll say it again, leave you lights on, of course, IMHO.
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Tom F '95 945na, lien holder on a '95 944Ti, RIP '78 244
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