Hypermiling
Friday, May 16th, 2008
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been experimenting with what is known as hypermiling. In case you don’t know what that is, you’re not alone. Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t know either. Essentially, it’s a collection of methods to get the most miles per gallon as you can by driving differently. It’s not magic. It’s just practicing some simple methods that make sense. Some, though, do not make sense and should not be done. Regardless of how many miles per gallon it gets you, drafting (riding on the tail of some other vehicle, such as tractor trailers) should not be done.
The one practice that I’ve been working on is coasting to a stop and trying to sit idle as little as possible. If your car is running and you’re sitting still, you are getting 0 miles per gallon. You’re expending fuel but not going anywhere. Also, most people approach a stop with their foot on the accelerator. They go straight from that to the brake. Instead, take your foot off the gas and just coast to the stop. If it’s a red light, try to coast long enough so that you don’t actually have to stop. Once you stop, you lose all the energy that you have built up. You have to spend fuel to get that momentum back.
So I tried this method after my last fill up, and I was able to increase my miles per gallon by about 30%! Most of my driving is in the city, and I actually got more miles on the tank than I did when I was doing all highway driving. I’ve got a faulty O2 sensor right now, and I need to get a shock replaced in the rear. Both of those things would increase my MPG even more.
There are other good techniques at the hypermiling website. Keep in mind there are other things on there that are dangerous and should not be done (drafting and extremely over inflating your tires). Use common sense if you want to try this. But if everyone did this, we would all save a lot of money and use a lot less petroleum.