Hypermiling Works!

Just my changing my driving habits, I have increased my mileage from 28mpg to 33mpg in mostly city driving, an increase of almost 18 percent. My new driving philosophy is use the gas and brake as little as possible. It’s easier for me since I drive mostly at night with little traffic, so I can coast easily and leave the A/C off most of the time. But you can do it, too, even if you drive during the day. Have any of you changed your driving style to save fuel? If so, what kind of savings have you gotten? Any other ideas?

Hypermiling Update

I’ve been trying some hypermiling driving techniques and seeing improvement in my mileage so far. It takes a lot more concentration than traditional driving, but it seems to work. My current goal is to break 300 miles on one tank, which I haven’t done in months. The essence of the driving technique is to coast as much as possible and apply the gas or brakes as little as possible. For example:

  • As soon as you know you’ll have to stop ahead at a stopsign or light, take your foot off the gas and coast. Your tachometer might still show greater than idle RPMs, but the fuel flow will be idle fuel only.
  • When approaching a hill, speed up gently at the bottom and coast up the hill.
  • Coast downhill when possible.
  • If you don’t have much traffic nearby, “pulse and glide”. Pick a target speed, accelerate gently to slightly over your target, and then coast until your speed drops a bit below your target. Make sure no one is behind you because this is highly annoying to other drivers.
  • When you accelerate, pay attention to how hard your engine is working by watching the tachometer, listening to your engine, and noticing how much torque you feel. If you’re pressed back in your seat and approaching redline on the tach, you’re having fun but wasting tons of gas. I try to keep my engine below 2500 rpm.
  • Time your lights. Stopping and starting burns more fuel than maintaining a constant speed, and it’s annoying!

Good luck!

Hypermiling

Although the skyrocketing price of oil is killing the airline industry (except Southwest) and making a wide variety of products more expensive, it’s finally persuading people to make better transportation choices as well. That makes me happy. People are trading in their gas guzzling trucks for more fuel-efficient sedans, setting up carpools, moving closer to work, and using public transportation. Recently year-over-year oil consumption actually dropped for the first time in a long time.

One technique many people are using has been labeled “hypermiling”. They challenge themselves to squeeze every possible mile out of their existing cars through improved maintenance, pulling unnecessary stuff out of their cars, and most importantly changing how they drive. Check out this website on the subject. Many of the techniques seem easy to do once you’re in the habit, but I obviously don’t recommend NASCAR-style drafting. =)

Machine Gun News…with Bullet Points!

  • The Boxes now have Toll Tags. I hate toll roads and try to avoid them if at all possible. But if I have to use them, I hate the payment process even more – either a bill in the mail for $1.25 or disdainfully tossing in a handful of coins every couple of miles. So I joined the 21st century and stuck the tags on our windshields.
  • I successfully sold my second item on Craiglist – the massive filing cabinet that I refused to make one of my poor friends drag up the stairs to our third-floor apartment. Now I have a well-used but cheap cheap Sony stereo cabinet for sale…
  • Last night we finally had some residents over for dinner! We wanted to get started with that much sooner, but it takes time to build the relationships. This was a really nice engaged couple, and we had a great time. Jenny made chicken cordon bleu.
  • Thursday night we had our monthly CARES meeting with our area director and the other IBC-connected teams. The president of Apartment Life was there to share some news and encourage us. He’s one of the most positive and encouraging people I’ve ever met. His enthusiasm and passion for God is infectious. He said our job boils down to one thing: making God look good. I liked that.

Outsmarting the Man?

The Check Engine light in my car is on. After scanning the error code, AutoZone told me I had a bad oxygen sensor, which monitors the exhaust and tweaks the fuel-air mixture to make the engine burn fuel more efficiently. According to the Internet, the part should be $50-70, but I didn’t know how to install it. So I called a local Christian auto repair shop. Since they made a big deal out of being Christian, I hoped they would be honest with me. When I called for an estimate, they recommended an $86 diagnostic inspection (just in case the 10-year-old sensor hadn’t really failed). Then they told me the part cost about $240, and the labor would be $70-100. So in total, they wanted to charge me about $450 to install a part I could get for $50. I decided not to give them my business. Instead, I went back to AutoZone, bought the part for $50, and installed it myself, thanks to the Internet, prayer, and PB Blaster corrosion dissolver. It’s fun to stick it to the man. =) Unfortunately, the light is still on, but the AutoZone guy said it might take 300 miles of driving for the computer to realize that a new sensor is in place. Stay tuned…

Why I Like High Gas Prices

Wow, an update two days in a row! I don’t have anything to say about the game except that despite the outcome, it was very fun. =)

Today, I want to talk about why I like these high gas prices. No, I don’t like paying $35+ each time I fill up, which is nearly once a week. I like them because they are the only way to convince us to conserve gas. It’s easy to buy the huge, gas-guzzling SUVs and drive our own cars wherever we want when gas is $1/gallon. Now that it’s $3/gallon, people are buying more fuel-efficient cars, thinking more about alternative fuels, carpooling more, and using mass transit more. Jenny and I are even starting to talk about moving closer to work within a few years. The US consumes nearly a quarter of the world’s oil production but has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. Think about that. To make matters worse, significant portions of the world’s oil supply are controlled by Middle Eastern countries whose opinions of us range from uneasy tolerance to hatred. President Bush was correct recently when he said, “America is addicted to oil.” Paying so much for it will slowly help us break our addiction.