hypermilling

my mom forwards me all kinds of links on my email, about everything that she thinks is interesting or could help me. it's so funny. My grandmother (her mother) used to tape segments of tv shows like Oprah and send them in the mail to her, and she used roll her eyes about it! now she kind of does the same thing, only in an updated, 21st-century form. I love it.

anyway, a few months ago, when we were deep in the gas crisis, my mom forwarded me something that has kind of got an underground following - hypermilling. I had never heard of it before. It's a set of driving techniques to save on gas, and they really work.

It's all about using hills for coasting to your advantage and stuff like that. Some of them can be dangerous, though (FYI), like turning off your engine when stopping at red lights and tailgaiting semi trucks on the freeways because their large size cuts wind resistance for your car, causing less gas needed to propel it along. The hardcore hypermillers actually go into their cars and put stuff into their engines. It's crazy. You can Google it, really, but I will share with you, my friends, my knowledge.

Some things that I can remember are (and what I've learned myself):

1.) Don't Brake!

Brakes are gas-wasters. Yes, they are there to save your life if you need to stop or avoid something suddenly, but other than that, they WASTE GAS! Your car will slow down if you stop pressing the gas pedal - USE that to your advantage. Look to see what's coming ahead of you, especially if you know your route. If you drive the same way to work every morning, you know where the stop lights are, so be smart about that. Stop pressing the gas as soon as you get the red light in sight. Most people keep going with the gas pedal and only hit the brakes at the last minute, about 15-20 feet before they have to stop - waste of gas! You have to slow down anyway, so if you let up on the gas way in advance and avoid using the brakes until you absolutely have to - to not hit someone, it really does save gas.

Same goes for stop signs and any other time where you know you have to stop. Hypermilling sites recommend timing your commute to hit all the green lights but that's too complicated for me. But I do know where the longest stop lights are in town are and avoid them as much as possible. The longer your car idles... you guessed it... more gas is burned.


2.) Don't press the gas pedal that much

In line with that thought, most people are in the habit of just pressing on the gas pedal the whole time you are driving, unless it's time to stop. Zooooooom-STOP-Zoooooooom-STOP... etc. Well, This next trick takes some getting used to. Your car will keep going at the same speed for several seconds if you let up off the gas.... newer cars go for longer than older ones. So, with that in mind, let up off the gas every few seconds. Go until you start to slow down below the speed limit. Be careful that when you press the gas again, that you are very gentle - you don't want to come down heavily with your foot and zoom forward, wasting gas and defeating your purpose. I guess it helps if you know how to drive a stick shift, you know the motions of fluidity with the pedals.

Anyway, driving this way can be kind of annoying, but trust me, it is worth it. and you will get used to it.


3.) Hills are your friend

Hypermillers call them "road-candy." Where I live there are a lot of hills, and it helps. You can coast for a long time if you get a good enough start up the hill, and there's no traffic slowing you down in front of you (which is a big problem - we get EXTREMELY slow drivers who go 10 miles below the speed limit - it kills me).


4.) Go the speed limit

This one pains me to no end, and I don't know how much I believe it. I speed. I love it. I do it unconsciously and have a great need for speed. My Alpha Phis know this about me all too well. Anyway, the theory on this one is that it takes less gas to go slow and more to go faster. MY theory is that the faster you go, the less time it takes for you to get where you're going, and your engine is running for less time overall, therefore consuming less gas as a whole.

but the Technique #2 as described above has helped me to slow down a bit.


Ok, that's all I've got for now, there's a LOT of other things you can do. But let me tell you, I have saved a lot of gas. I notice a big difference. Everytime I fill my tank, I reset my odometer to "0" on one of the trip settings to see how many miles I can get out of a total tank (until the Empty light comes on). An average mile amount for me is about 275... but I recently got 285 miles... that's 10 more miles! That's several trips from work, school and home for me. Once, when I wasn't careful, I only got about 175 miles from a whole tank - that's HORRIBLE!! I'm soembarrassed about how wasteful I was. So now you see.

Let me know if this works for you, I'm interested in other people's experiments in this!