Hyper-WAT?

Well, Chippies, in a desperate attempt to save money during these times of astronomical gas prices that are continually on the rise, I have decided to join the economical group of motorists who call themselves the "hypermilers". What is "hypermiling"? It's a concept based on changing your driving style in ways that will increase the fuel economy your vehicle.

So anyway, after reading about this technique on a Focus website I'm a member of, I decided to look into it and discovered HyperMiling.com. I read up on all the various tricks and now I'm trying them in real life as an experiment to see how much my gas mileage improves.

Now, I am by no means a rough driver. I normally drive in a civilized fashion, but I could definitely be more gentle on the throttle. I often will not waste my time getting up to speed, like most drivers on the road. However, I know I could be much more gentle, regardless of the fact that I would be accelerating much more gradually to get to my driving speed.

Here are the techniques I have been using on this tank of gas while driving:

1. When accelerating to speed, I try to never let my RPM's go over 2500. I usually keep them around 2000 unless I need to accelerate a little faster.
2. When I see a yellow or red light far up ahead of me, instead of continuing to gas it all the way to the red light and then braking, I just take my foot off the gas pedal and coast in gear toward the light, gradually slowing down and very gently braking as I approach the light. Often times, I'll still be rolling when the light turns green again and can just lightly get back on the gas without even braking, passing people still stopped at the red light who had previously passed me to get there faster. Not only does this actually put me ahead of some of these people, but by not using the brakes much or at all while approaching the light, I save gas that is normally consumed while braking harder.
3. When accelerating, I try to avoid using the gas pedal. I get my car up to 25MPH gently, then turn on the cruise control and use the ACCEL button to accelerate. One press of the button increases my speed by 1MPH, so steady presses of this button increase the car's speed gently and gradually, but not too slowly. I find that the car's computer does a better job at stabilizing the RPM's than my foot does, so usually my RPM's barely go over 2100 or so while accelerating up to speed.

So anyway, I have been implementing these techniques on this tank of gas, and I think I'm going to have great results. Here is a comparison, shittily thrown together on MS Paint, to where I am now versus where I used to be at the same point.

Fuck yeah!

I'm still not sure how accurate this reading is, having only used less than a fourth of a tank of gas, but if it is, it's reasonable to think that I could possibly get 60 or more extra miles to this tank of gas compared to my usual gas mileage. I'll update this blog with my final results, but the idea of being able to drive that much further on a tank of gas is great. I sure could use some of that money saved on gas.