My normal driving style was to go with the flow of traffic and try to get to work and back in the shortest time possible. I found an article on Hypermiling while Stumbling, and gave it a shot about 150 miles into a full tank of gas.
My average MPG was about 30.5.
After implementing the techniques; use cruise control, never go over 60MPH, coast whenever possible, turn off the engine when coasting (when it is safe to do so) and when not moving, etc. My gas mileage was over 34 when I refilled my gas tank today.
With a full tank of gas, I'm looking forward to beating 34MPG.
I also started riding a bicycle again. Riding a bicycle gives you the feel for maximizing coasting. After riding the bike for a few days, my coasting behavior in the car became more instinctive.
My car is a 1993 Ford Probe SE, manual transmission. I have 16" alloy wheels with 235-50 tires inflated to 37psi.
Hyper miling is more fun on the road than driving fast. It makes the commute a game of strategy where you actually get something in return in the form of fuel savings and a sense of contributing to the US economy and also to National security.
As stated in a previous post, we are in a position of weakness by being dependent on Petroleum for the majority of our Energy, and by being so, are subject to the violence, blackmail, and unearned influence of the oil producing nations.
If more people practiced Hypermiling techniques, IMHO, demand for oil would go down, OPEC would get poorer, and over long periods of time, we would be safer and our economy would be stronger.
Of course, there are other things we can do to help the cause of putting down the oil cartels; use fluorescent lights and more efficient appliances, buy more fuel efficient cars, and let our government officials know that we want them to work hard on fixing our energy problems by providing tax breaks and other incentives for moving off of fossil fuels as fast as possible.
I don't believe that Global warming is human induced. There's not enough evidence, and it's quite arrogant to believe that Humans are powerful enough to affect geological processes like the entertainment industry, I mean the news media claims.
Our problem is in security and economics.
The economic problem is that global economies depend on fossil fuels as the primary resource for energy. The opportunity is for the countries that get off of petroleum first. Those countries will jump ahead of their competition in the long term and be richer and more powerful than the countries which remain enslaved to the oil cartels.
Security is directly related to dependence on petroleum. We are ensnared in Middle East problems because of the Strategic importance of petroleum.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Hypermiling works.
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