The mostly harmless pedant. (stormdog) wrote, @ 2008-05-23 09:46:00
Current mood:
working
It was a dangerous thing that posicat said to me, on one of his first rides in my new car when he saw me shifting into neutral to coast up to stop signs. After telling me about how it's bad for a transmission to coast in neutral and it might not be the best idea to do it regularly, he said that I must be trying to become a hyper-miler.
Now, I'd never heard the term, but knowing that the internet is astoundingly effective at matching people with shared interests together, however unusual or strange those interests are, I intuited that there must be a group of people who are working on techniques to save gas while driving. So I looked the term up on Google.
And, just like I do when I get turned on to any new interest that makes that satisfying 'click' in my brain, I started scouring the intertubes for resources. Here's some interesting reading I found. And, while I'm not doing things like turning my engine off on the highway and gliding in neutral behind big-rigs, or lowering the level of oil in my engine crankcase to reduce internal friction, I am making a few changes to my driving such as taking turns at higher speeds and coasting into stop signs without using brakes. I'm using my psuedo-manual transmission (it has a push-button feature that allows it to act like a manual in the first three gears) in the Aveo to limit my RPMs to about 2500 when accelerating from a stop. I'm also going to inflate my tires up to the maximum sidewall pressure and, on the way north, fold my mirrors in to streamline the car body. I'm also going to see if I can find a northbound trucker and hang out behind him for a while. Not stupid-close, but enough to make a difference. If I have time, I'm going to take the back seat out of the car too. I won't need it, and it'll make the Aveo ligher and give Kuma even more room back there.
I have to admit, I do really wish I had a hybrid to make coasting with the engine off a little easier. I don't think I'm going to try it in a regular gasoline burner anytime soon, but reading about the 'pulse and glide' (that is, speeding up past your target speed, turning your engine off to coast down below it, then repeating) really breaks my brain. It doesn't seem like it ought to work, but empirical evidence shows it does. I love reading theory about things like this, even if I never actually use all of it.
And driving with attentiveness to gas consumption has actually made me a better driver too. I'm noticeably more aware of my environment than I was before as I keep looking two or three lights ahead and timing my speed to hit the greens. I don't want to talk on the phone because I might foul my timing and have to stop! And everytime I fill up my gas tank and calculate my mileage, it's like seeing my score at the end of a level. I can't wait 'till I have a ScanGauge so I can see mileage in real-time and can fine tune even more.
But first, a tangentially related article about wave propagation and fluid dynamics as they apply to traffic in amateur experiments conducted by a bored engineer on his way to and from work. Really interesting stuff, and will probably save you some gas too.
A neat, and sometimes kind of scary, 4 page article about a guy who, using some extreme and, yes, dangerous techniques, gets 59MPG in an accord and is involved in competitions, wherein he scores into the mid 100s driving a hybrid.
A Video (that I haven't watched yet) about Bill Kinney, who spent $56 on gas for a 2000 mile trip to Hybridfest, where he won the MPG contest by averaging 220% of the EPA rating for his car.
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stormdog) wrote,
working
