CleanMPG, - What is hypermiling An authoritative source on fuel economy and hypermiling
A local radio station interviewed the founder of this web site and he briefly touched on some tips. I have to say I was intrigued. I drive a Volvo stick shift sedan which was getting me 26.5 mpg average. But even at that rate I was really noticing the pinch of gas prices. So I've tried some of his tamer steps. I'm wondering though, how dangerous are some of his ploys? For example, he suggests inflating your tires to the maximum pressure listed on the sidewall, as opposed to the pressure suggested in the manual. In my case, that would be 55 PSI instead of 33. I felt too nervous to go that far so chose a middle ground of 40 PSI. Get this, he "unofficially" suggests 25% OVER the maximum PSI but says he can't suggest that for legal reasons(?). Other steps are common sense (clean out your car trunk and back seat) and still others are extreme (Pulse and Glide - get about 5 feet behind a mack truck and turn off your engine, being drawn forward by his draft). I've been doing a compromise there where I'll come up somewhat close to the truck and push the clutch in to drop the RPM's to ~800 (Idle). In about 3 days of paying attention and doing little things like the tires and changing the air filter, I've got my cars computer to read 27.0 average mpg, and I think it's still got a ways to climb! What really grabbed me is this guy has an old Ford Ranger he's getting 65 mpg with! And he gets his Prius waaaay over 100 mpg.
So does anyone employ any of these methods? Anybody heard of this before? I figure if I can improve my fuel economy 10% without too much effort I can save about 3 tanks of gas/year. @ $4.00/gallon x 16 gallons it's only $68, but still. Hey, maybe I can get it to 20% if I can just learn to draft those mack trucks....
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