Just my changing my driving habits, I have increased my mileage from 28mpg to 33mpg in mostly city driving, an increase of almost 18 percent. My new driving philosophy is use the gas and brake as little as possible. It’s easier for me since I drive mostly at night with little traffic, so I can coast easily and leave the A/C off most of the time. But you can do it, too, even if you drive during the day. Have any of you changed your driving style to save fuel? If so, what kind of savings have you gotten? Any other ideas?

I’ve been trying some hypermiling driving techniques and seeing improvement in my mileage so far. It takes a lot more concentration than traditional driving, but it seems to work. My current goal is to break 300 miles on one tank, which I haven’t done in months. The essence of the driving technique is to coast as much as possible and apply the gas or brakes as little as possible. For example:

• As soon as you know you’ll have to stop ahead at a stopsign or light, take your foot off the gas and coast. Your tachometer might still show greater than idle RPMs, but the fuel flow will be idle fuel only.
• When approaching a hill, speed up gently at the bottom and coast up the hill.
• Coast downhill when possible.
• If you don’t have much traffic nearby, “pulse and glide”. Pick a target speed, accelerate gently to slightly over your target, and then coast until your speed drops a bit below your target. Make sure no one is behind you because this is highly annoying to other drivers.
• When you accelerate, pay attention to how hard your engine is working by watching the tachometer, listening to your engine, and noticing how much torque you feel. If you’re pressed back in your seat and approaching redline on the tach, you’re having fun but wasting tons of gas. I try to keep my engine below 2500 rpm.
• Time your lights. Stopping and starting burns more fuel than maintaining a constant speed, and it’s annoying!

Good luck!

Although the skyrocketing price of oil is killing the airline industry (except Southwest) and making a wide variety of products more expensive, it’s finally persuading people to make better transportation choices as well. That makes me happy. People are trading in their gas guzzling trucks for more fuel-efficient sedans, setting up carpools, moving closer to work, and using public transportation. Recently year-over-year oil consumption actually dropped for the first time in a long time.

One technique many people are using has been labeled “hypermiling”. They challenge themselves to squeeze every possible mile out of their existing cars through improved maintenance, pulling unnecessary stuff out of their cars, and most importantly changing how they drive. Check out this website on the subject. Many of the techniques seem easy to do once you’re in the habit, but I obviously don’t recommend NASCAR-style drafting. =)