It’s hard to know which aspect of hypermiling is the most dangerous. Switching off your engine to coast? A soup tureen of not good. Driving more slowly than the surrounding traffic flow? A plunge pool of uh-uh. How about drafting an 18-wheeler? Let me put it this way: I’m watching Final Destination 2 right now. And yet, in Sam Abuelsamid’s latest installment of “And Now for Something Completely Mundane,” Autoblog‘s main man is happy to do just that– as are some of his new best buds. Before I share this excerpt, a word to the wise: NEVER DO THIS. “Jim managed to get hooked up behind a semi that was cruising at a good clip for an extended period of time, while we had trouble finding any trucks running faster than 60-65 mph. The day before, on the trip from Chicago, we tied at 28.8 mpg although Jim and Kevin had a slightly higher average speed at 63 mph vs our 60 mph. We’ve since become aware of a couple of tricks that seem to be helping, which I’ll divulge at a later time. Never let it be said that journalists aren’t competitive. As I finish writing this paragraph, a slightly faster truck passed us, and Steve has slipped in behind it. As we slid past, I glanced over to see a very unprofessional finger gesture from Mr. Kelly. Kevin and I will be discussing that tonight over steaks in Amarillo.” Note to Audi PR minders: someone needs a bitch slapping.
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I’ve never understood the hypermileage fru-fru anyway. One of the vehicles I own is a Prius, but I drive it like any of my other cars; I don’t set out every day trying to get better-than-rated mileage. (OK, I don’t drive it like my other cars because I have to whang the pedal down to the floor more often to accelerate, but that’s another story.)
I just don’t understand the rationale of someone who’s out to get, say, 25% better mileage than I at the expense of possibly killing themselves, a passenger or another motorist. Pretty bloody stupid, innit?
Is there some Peter DL channeling going on here? :)
I never understood hypermiling. I thought the idea was to *not* let being cheap impede your lifestyle.
I don’t understand extreme hypermiling either.
On the weekend my wife and I drove about 50 miles return to nearby hills in our Prius and averaged between 57 and 58 mpg (4l/100km). We drove at or slightly less than the speed of most of the other traffic. I was trying to drive smoothly and not delay anyone.
Driving in a way that is unsafe to get a bit better economy than is possible by just driving smoothly with care for surrounding traffic, seems crazy to me.
I agree – if you buy a thirsty beast then deal with what it consumes. If you really wanted good mileage then you should have bought something that would have delivered it in the first place.
Besides the auto body repair shop bill is going to evaporate any gains you made saving fuel if you need a new front end from rear ending a tractor-trailer, and the hospital stay from a tread flying through your windshield and the ensuing rollover because the driver panicked is going to wipe out alot of fuel savings too.
Wanna save fuel? Drive slower. Or not at all.
28.8 mpg? Is that supposed to be good?
The semi thing does work. I was able to acheive a steady 40mpg in a ’99 Dodge Caravan at 65mph. But I already knew that from watching Mythbusters. I don’t make a habit of it. But I have changed my daily driving style to improve milage. I keep it at 70 on the freeway, since I’ve noticed a sharp dropoff past that.
I agree hypermiling is BS & dangerous to boot. There are TONS of options to save gas without endangering yourself or annoying the hell out of others.
The funniest thing is to see a single person in a supersize SUV going down the highway in the right lane so they can hit there 20’ish mpg highway when I can do some hoonage and cruise @ 75-80 & get double+ that on my gas guzzling sportbike.