This article about people who drive a specific way to maximize gas mileage is pretty interesting. A lot of what they do are things we encourage here at IAST:
- "avoiding jackrabbit starts"
- "avoiding stop-and-go"
- "anticipating lights"
- "driving a bit more slowly"
A few we definitely don't support:
- slightly overinflated tires to cut rolling resistance
- drafting like race cars behind larger vehicles
The drafting idea is dangerous, because it is essentially tailgating behind the largest vehicles that have the hardest time seeing smaller cars. Tailgating is bad, but the other lessons are good ones, and with gas nearly $4 a gallon, we should all consider driving better to save gas. In the article:
“I do as few accelerations and brakings as possible to get up to speed and
maintain it,” he said. He ... avoids lane changes and coasts to red lights.
Sounds like our message exactly. Save money: Drive better!
4 comments:
You know, I've been driving using similar techniques for a long time, but never gave it the fancy handle of "hypermiling".
Granted, I like driving fast as much (or maybe even more) than the next guy, but it's also great to offset that by saving fuel whenever you can.
Driving a manual transmission makes it easy to drop into neutral when i'm going downhill (for example), and I only do quick starts when the guy next to me wants to race...
I don't let my car go above 2000 RPM, cause it's the best car ever (2007 Toyota Camry, midnight blue, no big deal.)
But Tailgating is dangerous and kind of rude.
Tailgating is very rude, so don't do it. Leave as much space in front of you as you can.
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