Hypermilers

Saving gas the non-hybrid way 6

A nice story from Mother Jones this month on "hypermilers," people who use all kinds of wacky techniques to maximize fuel economy:

He starts the truck--well, gets it rolling--by releasing the emergency brake and putting the gearshift in neutral before jumping out and pushing the 3,330-pound vehicle down his sloping driveway with the engine off. He jumps in and, without braking, turns right, swerves around a dead skunk in the road, and then takes a left turn--again without braking--to a stop sign. Ahead, the light is red. "This is a long light," he says. "I'm screwed. We have to throw it away." "Throw it away" is the phrase Wayne uses to describe what most of us do with gasoline. We throw gas away when we accelerate fast, when we turn on the air conditioning, when we leave heavy stuff in the trunk, when we drive with a roof rack, when we don't change the oil, when we underinflate our tires, when we roll down the windows, when we speed, when we brake, or when we idle. Wayne might seem a radical at times, but he's really a conservative: He doesn't want to throw anything away.

I don't know about riding around with the a/c off and the windows closed in the middle of the Iowa summer with my two-year old in the backseat, but I could stand to employ a few other of these methods to reduce the fuel consumption of my handed-down-from-grandma, grad-student-budget-friendly, gas-hog V-6 Mercury Sable.

Julia Olmstead is a graduate student in plant breeding and sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University and a graduate fellow with the Land Institute in Salina, Kan., and a freelance writer on agricultural and environmental issues.

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  1. willa Posted 12:44 am
    09 Jan 2007

    not in Iowa, but...At home where there are actual mountains, I turn the engine off in my '69 Ford when I go down a big hill (no power steering or brakes, you see, so it doesn't affect those).  Then I turn the key back to "on" so if I need to accelerate for some reason, I just shift into third (the highest gear it has) and "roll start" it.  They really screwed me up, though, when they put a stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp I take on my way home.  Sometimes I roll through the stop sign and just deal with going 15-20 mph the rest of the way (~3 miles) down the hill, but if there's someone behind me, I usually have mercy on them and start it up again, although once I get to the speed limit I can turn it back off.
    One thing I'm not sure about: How much does avoiding braking help in a hybrid?  My Prius tells me it's regenerated lots of energy every time I have to brake a lot, theoretically charging the battery so it can run off the electric motor more.  I'm assuming there's some loss due to inefficient transfer of that recovered energy, but nothing like in a regular car.

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  2. sunflower's avatar

    sunflower Posted 1:59 am
    09 Jan 2007



    Prius Prius    I did the same engine-off coast in my old truck.
    We liked the Prius so much we bought a second Prius, the new design, which is much smarter and gets 20% better mileage.  
    My mileage was better than Cassandra's when we drove the classic old Prius because I moved with a more consistent velocity.  That advantage is not as apparent in the new Prius.

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  3. cavenoid Posted 6:32 am
    05 Jun 2007

    Kinda like a Homemade Hybrid.Yeah, this works! I've increased my mileage -- not that radically, but enough to realize that we could instantly reduce emissions by 10% by doing nothing. I got 15% more mileage per tank just by kicking the idling habit. Now I turn the engine off when the light turns red, even though I'm still a block away. I've made the shift to only using gas for forward motion.

    All in favor of stopping global warming, raise your right foot!

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  4. geekguyandy Posted 7:48 am
    05 Jun 2007

    Good IdeaI've been doing things like this in my Subaru and went from 23mpg at best to 28mpg without any of the more radical techniques. I mostly started because I replaced the brakes which cost a good deal of money, and realized that coasting in neutral that last half mile of the highway is much better those who accelerate up the ramp only to brake at the end. I know the times between light changes in town so I drive exactly 12mph in neutral towards the red light which turns green right before I get to it. Tricky stuff!

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  5. GreyFlcn Posted 9:01 am
    05 Jun 2007

    Yeah, that isn't going to workYou aren't going to get people to change their driving habits.
    Just in general, they aren't going to change their habits.
    At best you can change their behaviors by giving them direct feedback.
    _
    For instance merely having an MPG readout on the dashboard would probably go a long way to having people conserve gasoline.

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  6. geekguyandy Posted 12:10 am
    22 Jul 2007

    UpdateI posted to this earlier. I now get 40MPG by using more hypermiling techniques. This really works, and just takes patience. I bought a ScanGaugeII which gives me an instant MPG readout.

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