Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Hypermiling?

I drive a 2002 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport. I drive mostly to work during the summer, and I drive a ways further during the school year (working on my masters). Up until a few weeks ago I averaged about 21 mpg. I wasn't careful at all about how I drove or what route I took. I had heard of hypermiling, but I didn't really know anything about it, or if it would make much difference. A friend of mine pointed me at CleanMPG.com, and I started doing some reading about stuff to do. Most of it is fairly obvious, but it takes a lot of focus - not necessarily a bad thing while driving! :) So here's what I did:
- Go the speed limit.
- Keep my RPMs below 2250 when not on the highway. That happens to be 55mph for my car. Even on the highway, I keep my RPMs below 2250 until I get to 55mph, then I accelerate to 65.
- Coast whenever safely possible - I've found that if I take the highway, I can coast for over a mile going downhill to both exit ramps I use, and I don't impact traffic at all.
- Never accelerate toward stop-signs, red lights, or stale green lights

My commute is ten miles, so I drive twenty miles a day. Now that I can coast for two miles, there's ten percent of my drive where I use almost no gas. Altogether, with these few changes, I have improved my mileage to 26mpg, which is better than 20% improvement. Nice.

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