Well, the numbers are in and have been carefully calculated using a special formula. Ok, so not that complicated just miles divided by gallons. Anyway, my final MPG total is 22 MPG. Wha wha wha…. Actually it isn’t that bad. If I figure that I was getting 20 to 21 MPG a few years ago (the last time I checked) this means on average I am getting an extra 1-2 miles per gallon of gasoline. My tank holds at least 16 gallons so that is 16-32 extra miles on each tank of gas.
However I suspect it may be more than that. It has been a good three years since I calculated my MPG. I know as cars age they lose some of their performance so now I am going to try to drive as I normally do on this next tank of gas and see how my MPG changes. I will update on that when it happens. It may be a couple weeks though. I don’t plan on driving much in the next couple weeks.
Another thing to add to the mix- I didn’t hypermile the whole tank. I will write more about that tomorrow, but the main point is, hypermiling ain’t easy!
One thing IS for certain though. This tank of gas lasted me longer than any fill up in the past several years. That has to mean something. Had I waited until tomorrow to fill up it would have been exactly two weeks. This completely changed my financial situation last month. I was expecting to have to use $60 from savings for an extra tank of gas, but I didn’t have to. That rocks!!
Final opinion… It definitely works. I just think I have been getting way less MPG than I has first posted (20-21) based on calculations from a few years ago. Still, it takes work and for some it may not be worth it.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
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4 comments:
Well, good on experimenting. I'm curious about which hypermiling methods you used?
I used pretty much all the techniques from hypermiling.com Coasting to stops, and on hills. I also lowered my highway speed from over 70 MPH to 60 MPH... I would set the cruise control each time so I didn't have to worry about it. I think that was the major helper. I also tried to turn off the engine if I was idling for more than 10 seconds. But, I couldn't always do that with babies in the car :)
Yeah, I would say having your baseline MPG is pretty important to tracking your successes with hypermiling. I had to postpone starting until I was able to do that first (2 weeks). I found it hard to NOT use some of the techniques after I had learned them. Sitting there and the little voices in my head thinking about all the gas I was wasting....I imagine you'll especially struggle since you started using some already!
It is not so bad so far. I am still coasting behind cars that keep putting their brakes on because I hate riding the brake but other than that I am doing good. I am just keeping some fast paced music playing. I am pretty amazed bacause I have driven less than 40 miles and my needle has already moved considerably.
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