High gas prices are a bit like the weather: everyone’s complaining but no one’s doing anything about it. Actually, that’s not true. At the sharp end, consumers are buying more fuel efficient vehicles. They’re driving less. We’ve even heard talk of gas-conscious automobilists driving more slowly. Now THAT’S serious, and, to mind, reprehensible. So, while the mainstream media is full of helpful advice on how to use less gas (e.g. take those gold bars out of your trunk), I hereby present TTAC’s unconventional guide to saving fuel this summer.
1. Let someone else drive. I know: Hell is other people. But we’re talking about freeing America from its dependence on foreign oil, stopping the oceans from overrunning the coasts (whatever happened to that idea?) and saving enough money to buy better quality alcohol. Which reminds me: designated drivers don’t usually drive your car…
Of course, that dodge won’t work during the day. In that case, don’t have a car– even if you do. In all cases, common courtesy says you should offer to help pay for gas. But before you do the right thing, hide your credit cards and carry no more than $10 in cash. By the same token, avoid car pools. They are official arrangements where someone is always calculating costs.
2. Don’t go to work. Let’s face it: work sucks. And half the time you’re there, you’re doing nothing more than schmoozing with people you can’t stand or sitting in meetings where nothing that gets discussed actually gets done. Telecommute.
The trick with this strategy is to start small. Ask the boss for an afternoon off– ONE– to work from home. Send him enough email cc’s so that he knows you’re not not working. Then make it formal. Then gradually increase it to a full day. Then two. Then three.
And make sure you show up on days when you’re NOT scheduled to be in the office. That way the boss knows just how dedicated you are (i.e. he’s never quite sure if you’re supposed to be there or not).
3. Get everything delivered. If humans weren’t warm-blooded, we wouldn’t need to eat so damn often. But hey, we didn’t get to the top of the food chain (never mind Camaro-ownership) by basking in the sun all day long. Darwin rules. As does your local grocery chain’s delivery service, which will gladly drop off all your basic foodstuffs after six hours spent registering on the internet.
In fact, pizza lover, virtually everything you need to survive in this life can be delivered to your door: your children, dry cleaning, alcohol, hookers, everything. Alternatively, stop buying so much shit in the first place. A 1080 HDTV with a PS3 (rent games and movies via snail mail) and a maximum cable bundle will help in that regard. Hey, sometimes you gotta spend money to save money. I mean, the environment.
4. Add a fuel surcharge. This is the flipside of bumming rides, and it’s surprisingly effective.
First and foremost, don’t let anyone passenger in your car without kicking-in for gas. Guilt trip them on saving trees or limiting foreign entanglements or personal penury. It may sound mean– OK it is– but deduct a small percentage from your children’s allowance to teach them about environmental responsibility. Call it the Revenge of the Soccer Mom.
If you’re the boss, tack on an optional (small print) customer charge to cover your gas costs. If you live close to either coast, call it a “carbon offset fee.” If you’re an employee, ask your boss for a gas allowance. Again, start small. “These fuel prices are killing me. Do you think the company could kick in $10 a week for my gas?” Get the accountant in the habit of paying for your receipts…
5. Get the taxpayers to pay for your gas. There are lots of part-time government gigs– both elected and appointed– that come with free gas (if not a free car), from city councilor to “private consultant.” Most drivers won't consider this option because it means spending thousands of hours telling people exactly what they want to hear (i.e. lying) despite the fact that they're ill-informed or deeply misguided. But there is a hidden payoff: public service puts you in the unique position where you can lecture people about the evils of Big Oil knowing that these same people are paying your fuel bills.
And now I throw it to you, TTAC’s Best and Brightest. What other “unconventional” methods can beleaguered motorists deploy to take the sting out of soaring fuel costs? Although I’ve restricted myself here to the [barely] plausible, feel free to wander into the realm of the ridiculous. Remember: our country’s future, indeed, the safety of our entire planet is at stake! Not to mention your beer money.
Right now I can’t think of any other fuel saving methods!
However, the “model” pretending to fill up her HHR must be employing the Flintstone method, as her feet are filthy with road grime and the like.
For starters, we should bring back the “Save Gas – Fart In A Jar” bumper stickers from the 1970s. They will help; I’m just not sure how.
If you always live within your means and don’t try to budget (spend) every single dollar you make. Higher fuel costs won’t affect you. If an extra 100 or 200 dollars a month is going to break you and you drive a 25 to 40 thousand dollar vehicle then you probably had no business buying that vehicle. How the hell was someone like that expecting to pay for unexpected expenses like tires.
However, the “model” pretending to fill up her HHR must be employing the Flintstone method, as her feet are filthy with road grime and the like.
Nah, she must be one of our Asheville NC local free lovin hippy wanabes.
Don’t rush out and buy a new more fuel efficient vehicle to save gas but when the time comes to buy a new vehicle buy the most fuel efficient one that fits your needs. Be proactive not reactive. In other words if you are a card carrying professional cheapskate like me things like higher fuel costs won’t affect you.
Hmmm… I was actually writing an article about ‘Car Alternatives’ a couple days ago.
I’ll send it in the proverbial chute…
How about instead of conserving fuel, hoarding it? Oh yeah it might be a little dangerous, but why not get a few 50 gallon drums and start filling em up. When gas hits $5 you’ve got a nice little black market operation going. Not to mention the extra profits you can gain by adding “free” gas to your stockpile.
– Take the bus twice a week to wherever you’re going. This may sound un-funny, but in truth when I told that to my friends half of them starting laughing (the other half showed me the flipper).
– Use the road in front of you. Accelerate as little as possible, and coast as much as possible sort of like a sled on snow. It may seem dangerous in a 4 tone SUV, but is only dangerous to the others so don’t worry about it.
– Fill up the gas tank daily. That’s twice good. One is because the amount flying out of your pocket, at each refill, is low, second it may actually save you money since the gas goes up on a dayli basis. Heck, do-it every couple of hours, or morning, lunch time and evening …
Light your 5000 lb. SUV on fire, buy a car with a less than 2L motor, and move closer to your work. Upgrade your hot-water heater / heating system to a high efficiency unit. Teach your children to live within their means and to develop a trade (as middle-manager office jockey jobs are evaporating.) Move from the suburbs to a walking city (or closer to your job). Understand compound interest calculations. Grab the back of a moving (bio-diesel powered?) bus while riding a skateboard.
Or
Understand the Zeitgeist of an oil based economy. Embrace petrol wars of egression, killing millions of people to secure resources, and eventually bankrupting our fiat currency system.
You guy already know what I’ve been doing, making my own fuel! Of course the rest of TTAC seems to be the anti-Diesel Jihad… sigh.
–chuck
http://chuck.goolsbee.org
Well, you could always fill your tires with snakeoil expensive air Nitrogen at a premium price…oh, you wanted unconventional.
Antone just depressed me. I think I need to go drive around to take my mind off things…shit, I took the bus to work today (in fact, I tapped out a month ago due to roughly $16/day for driving/parking in Pittsburgh, and I only live 16 miles from my front door to my office). Guess I’ll just eat that depression away…
Bring back that other early seventies bumper sticker:
ASS, GRASS OR GAS; NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE
Outside of major cities busses use more fuel than they save driving around with 2 or 3 people in them.
One way to save money (not fuel) is to keep really tight records of driving anywhere that could be considered for a NPO. I worked at a church camp for awhile and we would have to go into town to get supplies all the time.. By taking my jeep we saved a little bit of gas over the camp truck and i got enough tax break to cover the fuel/maintance cost.
Well, the model is barefoot so “pregnant” might have a check in the pending column.
I say blow lights and jump curbs. It’s far more efficient to go from A to B in a straight line. At least when you’re ticketed (or arrested/committed), it won’t be for “waste of finite resources.”
forget the dirty feet on the model – what in the world is that wrapped around her left wrist?
love the article, lots of good ideas.
one idea i had is to siphon fuel from an unsuspecting coworker (only in emergencies, of course). this goes together well with another poster’s idea of fuel hoarding.
and bravo on improving the quality of the talent in the average picture that accompanies the articles. old geezers that call the shots like to have their pictures taken, but we don’t have to look at them, do we?
I’m so pleased TTAC’s jumped on this bandwagon… all these effing experts that have suddenly popped up telling me to make sure I pump up the tyres correctly and take off redundant roof-racks were driving me insane!
Alright, I can get past the dirty feet and the wrist thing, as she’s got a nice tattoo. However, that fact renders the photo completely fake. Has anyone with a tattoo EVER driven an HHR? Let’s be realistic here…
Drafting semis has other benefits in addition to gas savings: 1) it reduces the amount of wind felt in the cockpit of my Miata; 2) it puts the thrill back into driving; 3) it has significantly improved my reaction time.
Put a big magnet on the front of your car, and let the other cars pull you along!!! Heck, you might be able to turn your engine off altogether.
Aside on the cheesecake front: I’m going to recommend that there be a TTAC t-shirt on an appropriate, uh, model. The Blue Screen Of Death and Snorg Tees come to mind.
Not so aside: a ScanGauge II was recently mentioned in a Washington Post article on hypermiling, when plugged into the car’s ECU a driver can get instant feedback as to how they’re doing with mileage. I drive 600mi/year on my daily driver, 25mpg over the last few tanks. If I were to hypermile and get a 10% improvement, at $4/gallon would take a year and and a half to pay off the ScanGauge.
Push your car.
Pretty funny.
I mainly telecommute from a home / office yet manage a department over 1,000 miles away. The big drawback is you are considered to always be “in the office” on a 24/7 schedule somehow or that you can easily travel for extended periods of time and live in hotel rooms with a moments notice (though it does work out when you ask for a raise!).
I’m almost done with finishing our basement complete with 1080p ceiling projector, 100″ fixed screen, dolby thx 7.1 surround with in wall speakers / sub, stadium style theater seating, the PS3 (for blu-ray dvds I swear) or GT5 prologue and the obligatory old car seat turned into driving game platform with fake roll cage.
Driving – well can’t drive a Porsche slow so that’ll never happen but I spend my time trying to maintain speed (hehehe) with out having to slow down and speed up – though in KS people drive side by side oblivious to others around them that may want to pass their fat asses. Driving the 2500hd though I drive like a grandpa and try to stay to the right and out of everyone’s way. I’m getting a decent 16mpg in it even shutting the engine off at known long lights (does that make my truck a GM hybrid?).
a new ignition switch (at 140k) has boosted my mileage by about 7%.
Join numbersusa.com, to help stabilize the US population, instead of allowing it to grow 50% in the next 40 years.
Don’t slow down on the highway if you live in a crowded area. The slower highway drivers go, the more cars there are on the highway at any given time, the more likely the traffic will hit the critical density and begin stop and go.
In the government’s EPA gas mileage guide, there’s a graph showing cars get the best gas mileage at 55 miles per hour. So, it logically follows that we should drive 55 mph, NO MATTER WHAT. School zones – 55mph. Side streets – 55mph. Snow 10 inches deep – 55 mph. Hairpin turns – 55 mph. Highway gas mileage all the time!
In order for gas to be saved, it must accept Jesus as its personal lord and savior.
Make friends with a Tee-totaller, if they have a self esteem problem or social ineptitude, this is even better.
This way, you can go out clubbing, with your real mates, have a drink, get wasted and Mr “I don’t like alcohol” drives you home! Everyone wins:
You get a great night out.
Your mates will want to hang around you more often due to the free taxi ride.
Mr Hermit gets a night out with other human beings (rather than a DVD of Xena: Warrior Princess) and a couple of cokes for his troubles.
Best of all?
You don’t fork out for petrol money! Yay!
Anyway, must dash, I’ve got to drive my friends…..to……the…..local…..nightcl…..
Hey! Hang on a minute!!!!!!
P.S This also works with Muslims, but be prepared to be pulled over every 10 minutes by the police for “looking a bit dodgy”……
Two ideas:
1) Get a Diesel, a large home heating oil tank w/ spout. Fill the tank with $3.71 a gallon oil and fill your vehicle at home!
2) If you live close to Mexico, make sure your life insurance covers murder in Mexico, then proceed to fill your tank at $2.60 a gallon. Make sure to weld that home heating oil tank to your vehicle so you have gas after the 3 hour wait at the boarder.
and I don’t want to ear any crap about my Mexico comment
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-me-exodus7-2008jun07,0,492304.story
What is that skank doing barefoot at a gas station? What a pile.
No suggestions from me, I just had to comment on her.
My gas-saving idea: live in your car. It radically cuts commuting costs and saves time all around. Remember, “You can live in your car, but you can’t drive your house.”
The people I see bitching about gas prices usually have a $4 cup of Starbucks in their hand.
Friedclams…
I like you “Live in your car”. You can make a bumper sticker: “If you lived in your car, you’d be home now”
My advise:
(a) Get rid of the roof/toy racks. They only need to be up there when you are actually carrying a load.
(b) Make sure the next set of tires are low-rolling resistance. These tires have stronger sidewalls, and don’t have a flat bump on the ground. And check weekly to make sure that your tires are fully inflated.
(c) If you have a long drive ahead (1+ hours), run a free ad on Craigslist Ride Board. I often get college students who need a ride somewhere and chip in for gas.
(d) Use Google Maps to help plan drives. It has awesome features where you can give it a list of locations that you need to go, and let it find the shortest/faster route. It also has a nice “grab-n-drag” feature where you can grab the route and plop it onto other roads as an alternate route.
I’d say ‘borrow without permission’ gas from customers of your employers competition. Keep doing it until the customers start shopping at your store/business, and start paying your salary. And then, when profit rises at your business/store, you might get a raise!
Also, think of the fuel savings you could get if you removed all but one piston, fuel injector, spark plug and valve from your motor! Who needs 6 cylinders when one will do?
I recently read an article from Wired magazine that had some recommended ways to save gas. Some of them were sensible. However, some were downright asinine.
Here are the especially bad ones:
2. Coast. Hyper-milers suggest turning off the engine and coasting downhill. Be warned, though – automakers and some consumer groups say you could lose the power brakes and steering, making the car hard to turn and stop.
I cannot believe they actually recommend turning off the engine while travelling at speed. On, and you “could lose” power brakes and steering – how about WILL LOSE.
5. Draft. This one’s controversial because it’s dangerous. But we trust you: Inch up behind, say, an 18-wheeler, and kill the engine as you enter its slipstream (you’ll feel it). You’re drafting now, getting pulled along by the truck’s gas instead of your own.
Drafting a tractor-trailer is dangerous enough but, once again, there is a recommendation to “kill the engine”. I wonder if they really think the truck will pull a car along that way.
BTW…. here are some good humorous photoshopped solutions. [Safe for work]
Those feet are “dirty” with beach sand you landlubbers :). As for gas saving, I suppose hitchhiking is an option … but not one I would try. And forget telecommuting to your job, just quit! Grow your own food, build a windmill out of old car parts and horde copies of Mother Earth News.
Some of us would in fact be a lot happier living more simply and ditching “the man”, especially in the case of two income households. Sometimes ditching the lower income job of the two frees up enough time to more than make up for the “lost income” by doing things for ourselves, not spending so much on transport, etc. Learn to love shopping at thrift stores and garage sales. Never go in a Wal-Mart or shopping mall again. Live free, man.
yankin, I love that bumper sticker idea! We could make millions!
I peddle ass all over town.
So far this week, I biked to work. Zero gas and I can eat anything I want. I do that fairly often. More and more often, on weekends, I bike errands that don’t involve, say, carrying 6 2-cuft bags of mulch. That’s still a job for the car.
If we go out in the evening for beer, we sometimes walk to the bar. Drink all you like and no DWI convictions. Of course, you could get run over in a drunken stupor but that’s just Nature’s way of cleaning the gene pool. If you survive the walk home, you’re somewhat more sober than you otherwise might be (metabolizes the alcohol a bit faster to exercise).
I’d like to save gas by re-planting the yard with weeds native prairie grasses and never mowing again but that’s not going over big with the Chief Landscape Designer.
I hadn’t thought about CraigsList for ridesharing but, around here, CraigsList was infamously used to lure a 23-year old girl for a babysitting job interview and murder her. Sooo… you might be careful about your CraigsList rendezvous.
This guy isn’t using any gas:
Peace Coffee Delivery
Be sure to click the “Photo Gallery” link.
tailgate the shit out of some 18-wheeler’s! you get MUCH better gas mileage when you have no aerodynamic resistance.
Drive drunk. Either you won’t care how much you spend or your will get caught and lose your license, problem solved.
Her feet are disgusting.
Robert,
I’m really starting to look forward to your posts more and more. You always pick the best graphics…
Drive a small car that gets better mileage. Better yet, get someone else to buy the car for you. Here’s how I did it:
1. Have kids and get the wife to stay home with them.
2. Drive a beater minivan to work and have some mistress of obliviousness rear-end it at a stop light. Pretending that you are going to move out of a yield at a stop light works well for this. Have a buddy who does body work hammer the tailgate back out for free. Pocket the insurance money.
3. Come across a lead on a small car for wholesale and jump on it.
4. Take the “buying my love” check from Congress, fattened up a good bit due to said kids, add it to the insurance money and pay off the compact.
My parents live under a half mile away from me (sad, but true), so I’ve started coming up with reasons to borrow one of their vehicles at least a few times a week. They have two SUVs (’95 Grand Cherokee and ’07 Explorer Eddie Bauer and my dad has an old ’93 Dodge Dakota) all of which get much worse gas mileage than my Mazda3. The catch is that I’m NOT the one paying for the gas, even if I am burning it at twice the rate in their gas hogs.
The key is to pick the one with the most gas in it so I can drive it 40-50 miles without the fuel gauge dropping significantly. I just look at it as tapping into my inheritance before they have a chance to blow it on extravagant things like nursing homes, Depends undergarments and oxygen tanks! =)
Revolver,
low-blow on the “Jesus as Lord and Savior” comment. I’d hoped that TTAC readers were a bit more dignified than that. Some of us do happen to believe…
As for saving gas, I’ll just continue to drive the wheels off of my 1997 Toyota Tercel…she ain’t pretty, but with 175k and 30+ MPG even in stop and go, I’m not overly worried (yet) about fuel prices.
You can save gas by buying a more efficient vehicle, or you can save money by keeping the one you have until it’s just embarrassing to drive it anywhere you might be seen.
Best bet, move closer to work. If you think gas will continue to rise, and not retreat, you might want to go ahead and start looking to move into the city (if that is where you work) now rather than later. First, you can beat the rush and get out of you house before it plummets (or plummets further) in value. Second, if you live in a neighborhood where almost everyone is in the first 5 years of a 30 year mortgage, you might want to get out before the foreclosures overtake the place, and the government starts moving “victims” into the empty homes.
We have an area in Houston where this happened (due to an oil bust, but same effect). The values, and the neighborhood went downhill so fast that law abiding, income earning people all just turned in their keys and left.
Burn your SUV.
The use the insurance money to get a Honda Fit.
Hey, it’s just as bad as #5.
threer:
low-blow on the “Jesus as Lord and Savior” comment. I’d hoped that TTAC readers were a bit more dignified than that. Some of us do happen to believe…
Some of us also happen to have a sense of humor.
How about we all dispense with the Political Correctness….
I drafted off of 18 wheelers for a while, but a couple of them became angry when I did it so I don’t do it anymore. I guess they don’t want you to run into them if they brake, but not only does my 2400 pounder brake way better than their behemoth, but it couldn’t possibly cause any damage to them. Whatever, if they’re going to freak out about it then it isn’t worth doing.
To be specific, it seems the Protestants believe gas must accept Jesus as it’s own personal Lord and Saviour to be saved. Us Catholics figure God’ll forgive gas, so it’ll be ‘saved’ anyway.
By the way, I thank God every day for a sense of humour. That, and Tim Hortons coffee.
The girl reminds me of Laura Prepon (Donna Pinciotti from “That ’70s Show”). Curious, why is she pumping diesel into that HHR?
I don’t stop at stop lights and accelerate very very slowly.
I think we ought to require all roads to be built on the Penrose Stairs principle. That way, we can always drive downhill, thus improving our fuel economy.
AuricTech:
But what if someone wants/needs to go the other direction? Then they’d only be going uphill and thus wasting lots of gas and decreasing the fuel economy.
Do what the girl in the picture is doing and pump diesel into your gas car while looking stupid with your nasty feet. You will damage the engine making the car undrivable. No drive no need for gas. People will pitty you and drive you around because of your stupidity.
I drafted a track coming back from Macon last week and saw a 10 mpg improvement, even in uphill grades. It was great the computer was telling me I was getting 40mpg in level spots out of our Subaru LegacyGT. Probably helped some that the truck was only doing 62 mph. Drafting is not for the faint of heart, I had to stay less then 2 car lengths behind him.
I put my stick in neutral on long down hills. Not sure how much gas it saves, but you know. Weight reduction is good. Get rid of all that crap in your trunk. Drafting is dangerous as hell. Not sure saving a couple bucks is worth it. Even if it wasn’t dangerous I don’t think I could stand looking at the back of a truck for very long.
Probably the best thing you can do is basic engine maintenance. Change your oil and oil filter, replace your air filter (or clean your cleanable one). Use a throttle body cleaner. It’s really easy to do yourself. And if you haven’t done it in a while (or ever) you will feel a big difference in engine response, and a bit of an hp boost. Haven’t done your plugs in 30-40k? A basic tuneup (plugs, wires and distributor cap) makes a big difference if you need it.
I toss a bungee cord and hook a semi to my motorbike, I get 256 MPG this way as long as the truck is going where I need to go.
Saving on fuel is easy: 10+10=20.
This means: drive 10% less and drive 10% slower to save 20% of fuel.
If everybody does that the world will saving millions of barrels of oil per day, causing oil prices to collapse pronto.
It does require universal cooperation, including you.
So you drive down the freeway chanting the mantra 10+10=20, 10+10=20, 10+10=20….
It’s a form of gas guzzling therapy. Eventually it helps.
I got rid of my gas guzzling 16/21 mpg 1994 MPV and bought a more fuel efficient 18/26 mpg 350Z. Maybe I’ll get a Ducati 749S in a year or two, those get 30 mpg I think.
I’ve combined road rage with hypermiling: That dude who cut me off just to get one car ahead of me before a red light on a two lane road, I’ll get in front of him, next to a slow-moving car in the next lane go slow with them.
Move someplace that gets really hot during the day. Not only is it so hot you don’t want to go outside, there’s usually nothing to do in hot places anyway.
Levy an AC surcharge on your roommate when he bums rides from you because the AC in his car doesn’t work in ambient temperatures above 100.
This is no big revelation, but I got an alignment on my Prius.
My fuel economy drops from about 48 MPG to about 44-46 if my tire pressure is low in even one tire.
Most recently, my fuel economy dropped from 48 to 39. I had gone over a curb at about 5 MPH, knocking the alignment out of whack. And the car did not exhibit signs of a mis-alignment (no pulling or drifting).
I thought the Jesus saves and God forgives comments were funny. If I had been drinking coffee, I surely would have spit it out laughing. I think a sense of humor is critical to our health, happiness, and our spirits, and…I think God has a sense of humor himself; otherwise he would not have created Adam and Eve. :)
Here’s a thought…
Build or import a bicycle driven rigshaw (as they have in China and India) and have your children (or the neighbor’s kids)peddle you to work. That way you can battle the fuel crisis and the childhood obesity crisis at the same time.
Last summer when gas just poked through the $3’s, I witnessed a guy who weaved his way from the street in his Expedition through the parking to the grocery store I was about to cross to the parking lot. He stopped as he approached me and solicited me for “spare change for gas”. When I declined, he weaved his way through the shopping center, found no one and went to the neighboring shopping center to find a willing giver.
Someone needs to pay this man to go back to school… if he can get there.