http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/01/guy-can-get-59-mpg-plain-old-accord-beat-punk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2DVfqFhseo

I see a lot of that “hurry up and wait” driving people do, and it aggravates me. Why are you going to accelerate between speed humps? Why are you pressing the gas when you can clearly see the light ahead of you is red?

Everyone’s in a hurry, and they’re losing money and harming the environment in the process.

So far, on the highway I get 44-46 miles per gallon. Locally, around my rural homestead, I get 36 to 38 miles per gallon. The car is designed to hypermile/coast/whatever you want to call it, naturally, when I lift my foot off the gas pedal. It has cruise control, which I do use on the highway.

I noticed a lot of commenters here, who have Fords, noted that they get good gas mileage.

Yea!

Please don’t do this! It doesn’t do you and your family any good, either. And if you total your expensive new car, the extra you paid for the fuel efficiency goes straight down the drain.

I found pretty much the same results as Trent, with a couple of additions.

1) Hypermilers say that any time you step on the brake, you’re wasting gas. They love to coast, like Trent. But only until they reduce speed enough to make the corner. The faster you can take the corner, the less gas you waste slowing down and speeding back up. There are limits to how fast you want to take corners, but that’s a personal preference thing. Most of us would rather maybe skimp a little on the efficiency and be safer around the corners.

2) For gasoline engines and automatic transmissions, the sweet spot for speed v.s. efficiency seems to be at the lower end of the upper gear. Watch your tachometer, and when the needle dips, indicating it just shifted, that’s the best efficiency for that gear. Just after it shifts into high, that’ll be close to your best speed. Not sure if it’s the same for Prius, what with the electric motors and all.

3) Running the air conditioner will reduce your efficiency a lot. When hypermilers are competing, they have stories of using ice-cooled radiation suits to keep cool without using the AC. Rolling down the windows will also reduce mileage somewhat. You could being a squirt bottle.

Even when I drive out to the suburbs to look at houses with my grandma, we usually follow our realtor around, and the way he drives I’m very grateful that gas is cheap right now, and I hope we get a house and close escrow before gas prices go back up…

You’re right about having to be precise… but it sure would be cool.

This website really helped me out in my conversion to being a more efficient road traveller:
http://trafficwaves.org/

Trent mentioned a windy day messing with your fuel economy. That is true to some extent, but it depends on your engine’s power output. If, for example you have a car with a total engine output of 100HP, driving into the wind will have a significant effect on your engine. It takes an average of 75 HP to maintain 100mph. Bear with me here; I know you’re not driving 100. I’m illustrating wind resistance versus horsepower. The Prius hybrid system puts out a maximum of 110HP. Your top speed would be about 113mph, so driving into a 43 knot wind you’d max out at 70. You’re using a much higher percentage of the system’s power output to overcome wind resistance than the 200HP on my car, meaning my mileage decrease percentage would be less.

Okay, I can exhale now.

It is more about maximizing my time for these trips. For anything more than a seven hour drive, I fly.

Trent, if you’re reading: What kind of mileage does that Prius get at 80? I could never own one of those. I’ve sat in them as a passenger and my shoulders are much too broad for the seats (in an ’07 model, anyway).

Note to hypermilers: Please stay out of the left lane. It is for passing. Thank you.

“This forced us to accelerate quite a bit more to maintain speed . d. .” technically acceleration is a change in speed, so no acceleration occurs at a uniform speed (except when turning, but thats a different story).