I drive a Mercedes GL450: a vehicle that struggles to get 18 mpg. On the highway. Downhill. Downwind. Unladen. At the posted speed. But here’s the thing: I don’t drive my Merc much. I work from home; I live in a “walkable” community; I walk; I ride a bike; and I got rid of our second car. In other words, like many Americans, I want my gas guzzler and a clean conscience too. God bless America; when the market perceives a need, someone fills it. In this case, it’s our friends at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM). The industry lobby group is providing the juice behind the trendily hyphen-aversive EcoDriving movement. Which, to my mind, is a bit like the pre-nascent DietFeasting movement. I may be guilty but I’m not stupid. Or am I?
Today’s AAM press release leads me to believe I may well be EcoIntellectuallyChallenged. To mark the slow-down-you-selfish-planet-killing-bastard program’s one-year anniversary, the AAM provides a list of all the governors who never, ever ask their drivers to put pedal to the metal: Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), Bill Ritter (D-CO), Riley (R- AL), Haley Barbour (R-MS), Jay Nixon (D-MO), Martin O’Malley (D – MD), Bev Perdue (D-NC), Luis Fortuno (R – PR), Mark Sanford (R- SC), John De-Jongh (D – USVI), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sonny Perdue (R-GA), C.L. “Butch” Otter (R-ID), Steve Beshear (D- KY), Jennifer M. Granholm (D-MI), Brad Henry (D-OK) and Jon Huntsman (R-UT) .
Although only one governor gets a nickname, all of these state house dwellers have shown tremendous courage by asking motorists to drive like an octogenarian—rather than, say, recommending a return to Nixon’s double-nickel. Then again, why wouldn’t the govs support EcoDriving? Not only does the PC admonition not piss off any members of their constituency—from hard-core environmentalists to soft-core Suburban pilots—it’s the right thing to do:
“If just half of all drivers nationwide practiced moderate levels of EcoDriving,” the AAM contends. “Annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions could be reduced by about 100 million tons, or the equivalent of heating and powering 8.5 million households.”
Define moderate. Meanwhile, free miles!
“If all Americans practiced EcoDriving, it would be equal to 450 billion miles traveled on our roadways without generating any CO2 emissions. That’s 1,500 CO2-free miles for every man, woman and child in the United States each year.”
And we wouldn’t need CAFE, CARB or EPA tailpipe regulations! Uh, would we? So, anyway, how do Catholics, Jews and other guilt-ridden carbon positive people do this EcoDriving thing, then? The Alliance offers fourteen tips:
1. Believe You Can Reduce Fuel Use and Emissions – ‘Cause when you wish upon a greenhouse gas, makes no difference what you drive.
2. Avoid Rapid Starts and Stops – I drive around them as quickly as possible, me.
3. Keep on Rolling in Traffic – Rhode Islanders have been practicing the rolling stop since the octagonal sign was first introduced (without graffiti I’m told). Oh wait, they don’t mean EZ Wider style rolling do they? Sure, I drive much slower when I’m high, but the AAM can’t recommend that for people without a prescription, can they?
4. Ride the “Green Wave” – I’m still looking for the green flash. But it’s a good point: by going slower you can catch all the green lights and end-up going faster. Or, more precisely, get there at the same time as you would as if you were driving like a mad man. In theory.
5. Use Air Conditioning at Higher Speeds – Done. In fact, I also use AC at slower speeds. You know, when it’s hot.
6. Maintain an Optimum Highway Speed for Good Mileage – “According to the U.S. EPA, every 5 miles over the 60 mph level is equivalent to paying 20 extra cents per gallon for gas.” The faster you go the worse your mileage the more you pay at the pump? Who knew?
7. Use Cruise Control – Not me. I find myself slamming on the brakes when I use cruise control. That can’t be good for my mpg. Maybe I should try setting it a little lower. But then I end up swerving in and out of lanes to avoid hitting the car in front of me. Clearly, I need some more instruction.
8. Navigate to Reduce Carbon Dioxide – Can’t I just program my sat nav to do it for me? Let me see . . . Yes ,I can! Brilliant! Where’s the EcoDriving setting?
9. Avoid Idling – I’m never idle. Talk to the guy who sings “Adam in Chains.” He’s always Idol.
10. Buy an Automated Pass for Toll Roads – And don’t cheat on your wife.
11. Use the Highest Gear Possible – Sure but—where’s the fun in that?
12. Drive Your Vehicle to Warm It Up – That makes NO sense. Why would I drive around to warm-up my vehicle? Shouldn’t I just fire it up and head to my destination?
13. Keep Your Cool – Like I said, AC rules.
14. Obey your Check Engine Light – Obey? That’s a bit draconian isn’t it? What if environmentalists take control of my OBD and it flashed-up “CAP AND TRADE”? What then?
About #8 — “… sat nav … Where’s the EcoDriving setting?”
Fifth Gear did a piece this season on that very feature that was available on a Garmin unit.
You put in your two fuel consumption rates, and the unit will figure out the most fuel efficient (“ecoroute”)path for you to take to your destination.
Seemed to really work, but the suggested path took a whole lot more time than the fastest route.
I think it’s hilarious people tie mpg directly to emissions.
I think my bike that gets 43mpg (hey, it saves ME $$) pollutes more than my STi at 23.
I suppose the lack of a cat would do it, eh?
Rob
Robstar:
I suppose the lack of a cat would do it, eh?
Shhh – don’t give them any ideas….
vento> Too late. Cats are already in the pipeline last I checked.
Next think you know, they’ll want safety monitors, gps monitoring for pay-per-mile, side air-bags, etc and we’ll all drive bikes that make goldwings look like 150cc scooters.
Robert, most of those 14 tips are quite good. In my 20k miles/year of driving (one car in my house handles all long distances… our MINI does less than 9k/year), I see so many people that could save fuel and money by following some of those tips.
In particular, I can’t tell you how many times I get passed on one of West Virginia’s rural highways only to find that 3 miles down the road, I’m immediately behind the car that just passed me waiting for the same stoplight. The best part is that one particular route that always has some hothead passing me, there is a turn lane for those going right. The high traffic lane is the one that turns left. My house is to the right so the person gained no places to the stoplight in their quick jaunt to 70 to pass me going 55. I particularly enjoy when they make an extremely risky pass, having to dip in so they don’t collide head on with another vehicle.
IMO, the only place you can really make up any appreciable time by speeding is on the interstate at relatively long distances. For shortish drives of a shortish distance, relax.
Trust the tree huggers to complicate the most simple things.
I have budgeted X amount dollars for gas. With 3 vehicles [soon to be two] staying within budget can present some challenges. But it ain’t rocket science. And I really think I can pull it off, without a rule book.
I live in the east and of the G.T.A. The “T” stands for Toronto. Toronto is controlled by the far left,car hating, tree huggers.They love speed bumps,four way stops and destroying roads.
What have they created? Gridlock! nothing moves it just sits there idling. Some how this is supposed to be environmently friendly.
The loony left has banned pesticides,herbicides,and leaf blowers. You can’t cut a tree down,in your own yard. Of course when a big wind comes and the tree falls on your car,the car haters score one. I’m reduced to pouring boiling water on my patio to kill the ants that have invaded. I’m sure I’ve broken some insane law with that activity. I could go on forever,but I gonn’a stop.
Be aware of the eco nuts my friends. They will stop at nothing.
Avoid Rapid Starts
This is a given when driving a 4 cylinder Odyssey.
But seriously, most of these tips will get you better gas mileage. The way you accellerate and how you avoid unnecessary use of the brakes will do wonders. I check mileage on all of my cars with every fillup. I routinely get 2-3 mpg better than my wife on any of our cars, and my 17 year old son beats me by about 2 mpg as well (his 17-18 mpg in town with a Crown Victoria is impressive.)
I would quibble with the cruise control. On flat land, ok. But if you deal with hills, cruise will keep speed up at the expense of economy on the uphills, and it will get off the gas too hard going down, when you could use a little extra momentum for the next hill.
I’ve been amazed on the increase (2-4 mpg) when my AC is turned off in city driving. Not much difference on the highway.
Using any nav system will probably give you some new ideas. I’ve discovered two new short cuts — saves me about 30 miles a month. When you only drive 400 miles a month that is a lot.
Avoiding gridlock is the biggest thing, and yes, the car-hating local governments often make things more difficult.
I’ve been calling for mandatory MPG meters for years now. Just giving people the option to measure their usage makes a difference. And marginal decreases in US gasoline usage make the stuff cheaper for all of us.
I deliberately schedule my work hours as 6-2:30pm to avoid traffic.
Does wonders for gas mileage, although traffic in chicago is typically 2-8pm…..at least at 2:30 it’s manageable.
I’m in favor of the “mpg meter” in every car. I have one in my truck and find it quite useful, if inaccurate compared to the miles/gallons on a tankful basis.
Another little-known tip: slow down with no throttle in gear rather than waiting to hit the brake. Modern EFI cars can sense deceleration and will cut fuel injection until engine and road speed are too low. Short-term infinite mpg!
On the startup from a standstill: I find that accelerating smartly, as my dad always said, to be much more efficient than egg-under-foot eco-weenieism. Gasoline engines are more efficient at 75% throttle than when choked; cruising along in higher gears is more efficient than accelerating in lower gears. Boot ‘er to 75% and short-shift right at or over 2k to get up to speed.
Along the same lines driving in hilly areas can be an efficiency enhancer. Allow speed to build downhill and maintain constant throttle in high gear as the grade reduces vehicle speed without downshifting. You’ll be going a little slow at the top, and a little fast at the bottom, but if you time it right it won’t be that bad but you’ll maintain a good constant load uphill and can coast with injectors off downhill (hills, not mountains). Of course rowing your own gears makes it all easier.
I do this, and other tips few sites are willing to discuss, and have three tanks in a row (two in the hills) of just over 20 mpg in my 2002 Ram 1500 4.7/manual.
Drive Your Vehicle to Warm It Up – That makes NO sense.
I’m pretty sure that this means that you should try to avoid driving trips that are so short and quick that your engine never warms up.
You can do that easily enough if you make a point of making each trip count. Don’t drive to nearby locations if you can avoid it, and combine your errands so that several things can be accomplished with one trip. It takes a bit of planning, but it isn’t difficult to do.
Boring. Having recently watched the movie Knowing I realize that aliens will save my kids for the destruction I am causing and thats all that matters. :)
I think “driving to warm up” means don’t sit for 10 minutes to warm up a cold car, or don’t start it and let it idle while it warms up.
The best tip they didn’t include, is “drive less”. A 20% decrease in fuel cost, carbon emissions, traffic, everything… if you carpool or walk/bike/ride/telecommute 1 day a week.
A guy could even drive a Corvette 3 days a week and realize a huge benefit over any 5-day Honda Fit.
I am surprised the action with a huge benefit is promoted less often than teensy-weensy little gains.
“Sure but—where’s the fun in that”
That line pretty much sums up the whole environmentalist movement for me. They can take their liberal white-man’s-burden guilt trip and shove it up their organic corn holes. The only way to live life is guilt free. I don’t feel bad about anything I do – ever. Its actually pretty damn easy, and feels good man.
cdotson: In mpg challenges where teams compete for maximum fuel efficiency the modus operandi is to accelerate at full throttle to maximum speed (not fast in the case of these vehicles) and then coast to a stop. Repeat until you’ve exhausted your ounce of fuel, or whatever.
So there is a lot of truth to your dad’s method of accelerating smartly.
Some lifestyles are just more eco-friendly than others. I also telecommute, so my monthly carbon footprint driving my 19 mpg fullsize V8 sedan is far less than some Golf TDI owner who commutes 15 minutes to work a day. My biggest consumption is the coal I use to run my desk light and laptop during work, and the natural gas I use to heat my home in winter.
Funny thing is that most of the people who really get good mileages are the ones who NEVER think about it.
As the owner of a Fiat Punto, I never , ever think of how high my mileage is, ecodriving etc. I just accelerate when I can, and stop when needed. Guess what: Fuel cost is less than 40€ per month. I can get 800kilometers on the highway, with overtaking fun driving and everything.
My only friends who seem worried about their mileage are those with the big slow SUVs.
Just like the people with slow computers with little RAM are the only ones who bother tuning up and decluttering their PCs, while others with actually fast computers are just enjoying the performance…
Replace 95% of the US stop signs and 50% of the traffic lights with roundabouts and/or yield signs.
Twotone
Robstar :
August 24th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I think it’s hilarious people tie mpg directly to emissions.
———————————————-
Why not?
There is only so much clean burning and muffler can do. If X% of the ICE spit out is considered bad emission (NOx etc), then, for the same distance, you do have more emission if you use more gasoline.
Our city has traffic mazes that drive motorists in circles, turn prohibitions that take people blocks out of their way, a zillion 4-way stops, speed bumps that force cars to crawl then accelerate, and most traffic lights function 24/7 instead of flashing in the early hours. Reducing at least some of these would greatly decrease emissions.
Why are drive-thrus permitted if governments are concerned for the environment? Board ’em up.
These eco-aware days have provided a new opportunity for the mistaken notion that you save energy by allowing your car to slow down as you climb hills.
In fact, the savings is from increasing your trip time by decreasing average speed and the wind resistance that results from speed. Basic physics says it takes the same amount of energy to raise a given weight a given distance, regardless of how long it takes.
If you don’t believe me, try driving up a given hill at 70kph and watch your mileage readout/trip computer. Then try driving up while reducing speed. Somewhere below 30kph, as the wind resistance effect fades away, you will see no improvement. And below, say, 5kph, you will see worse mileage with an automatic, as the car expends energy just trying not to roll backwards.
Another way of looking at it is that if driving slower uphill saves gas, then there should be a very low speed at which it takes infinitely little gas to continue climbing. That just does not happen.
Some suggest taking runs at hills. The problem with that is the energy needed to get up to the “running” speed, and the energy needed to overcome the added wind resistance while maintaining the higher speed.
One way to improve mileage on hills is to use your trip computer to determine what gear is most efficient at what speed with what load on a given hill. I found that on one of our cars, forcing the car into 4th gear on a given hill is 20% more efficient than allowing the transmission to stay in it’s preferred 5th gear. Without a trip computer, you can try this by downshifting and seeing if you have to lift off the throttle to keep from gaining speed.
On the subject of trip computers, I too have maintained these should be as standard as speedometers. Now that innovators are equipping led center brake lights with text messages, I’d like to see cars set up with similar readouts of current mileage. It seems simple to route the mileage computer’s output to the led brakelight or equivalent.
The hope would be to set off a competition to see who’s getting better mileage. This would seem an excellent complement to existing on-road competitions such as who has better acceleration.
@ brandloyalty
I think you missed a step; momentum.
Regardless of the mathematics or various efficiency states, wind etc, a simple logic exercise answers the question.
Car X and Car Y arrive at the incline at the same constant speed. Both car’s speed is such that they could coast all the way to the top with the engine OFF. Car X turns off the engine, while Car Y maintains the entry speed up the incline with the engine applying power all the way.
Which car has used fuel?
Be aware of the eco nuts my friends. They will stop at nothing.…
Lost me on that none Mikey…I usually agree with you. There is noting wrong with expecting things to operate efficiently. By the way, who cares if there are some ordinary ants on your patio? Four way stops suck, true. But think about your car’s emissions the next time you are stuck in traffic. Remember those nasty oil streaks that used to be in the center of every lane on every highway? Gone thanks to closed crankcase ventilation systems. Enjoy classic car shows? Maybe boats with 4 stroke I/O’s? How about that exhaust smell? Even from well maintained engines, the odor is strong. Now picture sitting in heavy traffic with that smell, coupled with gasoline vapors steaming out of primitive carb setups. It would be unbearable. You can thank some forward thinking “lefties” for dramatically improving the quality of your drive…
Didn’t Bernie Madoff drive a GL450?
What have they created? Gridlock! nothing moves it just sits there idling. Some how this is supposed to be environmently friendly.
If you drive to work, and you work in downtown Toronto, you’re insane. I did that for about two weeks and formally decided that, f’ it, the GO Train was better in every conceivable way.
Now, the only people I see driving downtown are couriers, delivery people, cabbies and high-po lawyers, doctors and executives. I was in the TD Centre recently (doing a network install) and my poor little Honda never felt so pedestrian, sandwiched between Mercs and Beemers and Lexi.
If I drove a LS430 and pulled down half a million a year, I’d probably feel pretty amenable to gridlock, too. In the Mazda I was driving at the time? Not so much.
Otherwise, most people seem to either walk the PATH or commute. When I lived there, I biked. A nice route, too, along the Lakeshore trail and straight up the Humber. I don’t think it’s so much “loony left” as it is trying to set the city up in a way that’s sustainable. Commuting by car is, by and large, not sustainable and no matter how many four-ways and speed bumps you remove** those drivers still have to turn and park and such. Expressways only get you so much.
And wouldn’t you love it if they made all those lovely little Durham and Peel bedroom-community cul-de-sacs “people friendly” like those loony-left Toronto neighbourhoods that sell for more than twice what a mansion in Milton or Brooklin sells for? You know, so you wouldn’t need to drive half and hour and then walk fifteen minutes through the parking lots of Sobeys, then drive another twenty minutes to Costco, then another half hour to Blockbuster, then home.
Ecodriving is all well and good, but perhaps if we weren’t intent on building suburban wastelands we wouldn’t need to worry so? I live outside Toronto now, but deliberately downtown in a smaller city. I can stop off at six places on my bike on the way home without worrying about six-lane streets and killer parking lots, yet I still have a reasonable lawn and my kids can walk to school. No, I don’t live in a condo, but in a pre-war neighbourhood that was designed for actual people, not for the convenience of developers or tax-gatherers or auto magnates.
Where you live is not an either/or of Manhattan or Wyoming, but a range in between and I think people need to realize that the the choice suburbia does not put you, automatically, on the “right” side of a black-and-white set of choices. Being for public transit and traffic calming and congestion charges in London does not make you an anti-car jihadi who wants to strip farmers of their land rights, it makes you a realist.
Proposing sane development and traffic management for a city of millions is not “loony leftism” but a requirement for sustainability that people who live in small towns flat-out do not understand. You cannot run Los Angeles the way you run Podunk.
My only complaint is that Toronto (or the GTA as a whole), like LA, accommodates the car too much for a city of size—mostly to accommodate the commuters and swell the tax coffers of the 905 ring/ Instead of forever expanding highways, maybe it would be wise to figure a way to keep people from moving further off into wasted land and perhaps make it possible to stay closer to work. Why push the 407 to Brooklin or Peterborough? What will that accomplish, other than enabling three-hour rush-hour commutes?
Keep this up and EcoDriving will become necessary, and not in a good way.
mikey :
August 24th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
The loony left has banned pesticides,herbicides,and leaf blowers. You can’t cut a tree down,in your own yard.
You mean, versus the loony right, which subsidized the purchase of fuel-sucking SUVs and full size pickups with tax deductions? Naaawww…couldn’t be…we all know the government would NEVER use taxpayer money to stimulate vehicle sales. Only the loony commie left does that.
psarhjinian :
August 25th, 2009 at 12:24 am
Proposing sane development and traffic management for a city of millions is not “loony leftism” but a requirement for sustainability that people who live in small towns flat-out do not understand. You cannot run Los Angeles the way you run Podunk.
BINGO.
And I think for right-wingers, what it all boils down to is simple: taxes. They know darned well that problems like traffic, pollution, environmental destruction and congestion exist – they just don’t want to pay for the solutions because, God forbid, their tax bill might go up.
Here in Denver, which has a fraction of the congestion problems as a city the size of Toronto or L.A., we’ve been saddled with a subpar freeway system since the 1960’s. It was built for a city of half a million, not the three million currently living here. The traffic jams were taking on a L.A. / New York vibe. So the state proposes widening and improving the main freeway through town, I-25, with tax dollars, and extending the downtown light rail system to the southern suburhs, the source of most of the traffic. They estimate our tax bills will go up by about $100 a year. The taxpayers scream and yell, and the ballot proposal goes down in flames. However, a tax-funded proposal to build a new stadium for the Broncos passes. Gotta love those priorities. I’ll bet my kids’ college fund that if a $2 billion measure is put on our ballot this November to arm every elementary school kid with a handgun, we won’t hear a peep from the righties. But I digress.
So, to get the widening project done, the state puts it on the ballot again the next year…only this time, the project is funded with bonds. It passes. So, instead of having the project paid for by now, we have to pay the vig on the highway bonds for something like the next 125 years. Ditto for the ring highway around Denver, E-470, which was built by a public-private “partnership.” Translation: it now costs me almost $10 to pick up my mom from the airport when she comes to visit my kids. The highway recently announced it was doing away with manned toll booths, and sending bills to people who use the road without transponders. Never mind that there are hundreds of people, like me, who got juiced for hundreds of dollars over screwed up toll booth photos…and when we refused to pay, the state threatened to suspend our licenses.
But, hey, our tax bills didn’t go up!
The latest “argument” here is that more mass transit isn’t really needed. Translation: I don’t want my tax bill to go up.
And on and on.
You mean, versus the loony right
From past statements, I believe mikey is a loony centrist.
The latest “argument” here is that more mass transit isn’t really needed.
There’s some logic to that. I know that my fellow leftists will bag me for this one, but pumping money into transit (public or roads) instead of urban planning is like proposing free liposuction to deal with an obesity problem.
Transit is good for moving people between hub sites, like from one city or neighbourhood to another. Transit is very bad at intraneighbourhood solutions and we shouldn’t be designing communities that require it.
Public transit when used intraneighbourhood, becomes the “ghetto shuttle”, used only by people who have no other choice and shunned as a redheaded stepchild wherever possible. Private transit is almost worse in that building for it (multilane roads, tolls) facilitates bad urban planning and has a nasty, ongoing, but often-externalized cost.
But people like transit for the same reason the like climate engineering: they don’t have to change the way they live to accomodate it. Urban planning restrictions of the kind that promote sustainable living raises hackles, especially among those who have been sold, hook line and sinker by developers and such, on suburban pseudopastoral ideals.
So the state proposes widening and improving the main freeway through town, I-25, with tax dollars, and extending the downtown light rail system to the southern suburhs, the source of most of the traffic. They estimate our tax bills will go up by about $100 a year. The taxpayers scream and yell, and the ballot proposal goes down in flames. However, a tax-funded proposal to build a new stadium for the Broncos passes. Gotta love those priorities.…
I do like your airport though. Had the pleasure to fly into Stapeleton and out of DIA on one ski trip…I also got your $100 bucks covered last year when Summit County’s finest banged me for speeding last year between Breckenridge and Keystone – one of those famous 55 to 30 back to 55 zones…making me consider Utah this year…
In fact, the savings is from increasing your trip time by decreasing average speed and the wind resistance that results from speed. Basic physics says it takes the same amount of energy to raise a given weight a given distance, regardless of how long it takes.…
If your talking dragging blocks up an inclined plane I would agree with you. But don’t you think there would be a difference in the consumption profile of a car if you went up the hill at 30 or at full throttle? In other words, there is not a linear relationship between energy use and average speed, at leas as far as an ICE is concerned.
A friend of mine has a Scangauge on his car and he’s managed to add another 2-5 mpg in most driving situations by knowing which gear to be in at what speeds etc. Sometimes driving in 4th yields better gas mileage than being in 5th.
My tactic with most cars is to accelerate briskly to a decent speed and spend as much time in cruise control as possible. My car doesn’t have cruise control and the kind of throttle mapping that makes you want to be a hoon all day.
12. Drive Your Vehicle to Warm It Up
They just mean to take off and not let your car sit there to warm up. With my car, I roll out of my parking space, point the car towards the exit gate, start up and take off. One of my neighbors thought I had a hybrid 350Z for a while.
loverofcars1969 :
August 24th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Boring. Having recently watched the movie Knowing I realize that aliens will save my kids for the destruction I am causing and thats all that matters. :)
Did you notice all the cars in the background of the the airplane-crash sequence had their wipers for right hand drive cars?
wsn :
August 24th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Robstar :
August 24th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I think it’s hilarious people tie mpg directly to emissions.
———————————————-
Why not?
There is only so much clean burning and muffler can do. If X% of the ICE spit out is considered bad emission (NOx etc), then, for the same distance, you do have more emission if you use more gasoline.
Thats not entireley accurate. There are some people who do NEED diesel pickup trucks, for example farmers. On modern diesel pickup trucks that use a diese particulate filter for emissions, the dpi actually reduces fuel economy. The dpi is a soot filter built into a combustion chamber in the exhaust pipe. When the filter gets dirty, the trucks ECM sends a signal to spray fuel into the pistons on the exhaust stroke. This causes the engine to pump diesel fuel into the dpi in the exhaust pipe. The dpi then ignites this fuel to clean the engine. This process, called Regen, occurs frequently, as much as every 200 miles, and can take between 15 and 30 minutes. During this time, the trucks engine produces less power, and the gas milege decreases significantly. Many owners of these trucks are removing the dpi and the trucks EGR and are going from 10-13 mpg to about 16-20 mpg or more. In addition, these systems are causing severe reliability problems. Many drivers are seeing the MIL lamps turn on within weeks of purchasing the vehicle, because the dpi doesn’t always fire, thus clogging the filter, or the EGR, which routes exhaust gasses into the combustion chamber to burn up, will clog. These engines also require a different way of driving. Many dealerships reccomend “driving it like you stole it”. In city traffic, the dpr can go into an endless Regen cycle, thus instead of cleaning the filter, its simply burning diesel. In addition, the process only occurs when Exhaust Gas Tempertures are high, therefore drivers must run the truck at high RPMs to ensure that Regen occurrs and a trip to the dealership won’t be necessary. Tempertures in the exhaust on these trucks can reach as high as 1400 degrees. Ford recently had a recall involving dpf equiped trucks due to fires.
This technology is also known as Bluetech.
Nice tongue-in-cheek treatment Robert. As you know, many of the eco-driving things on that list are impractical or impossible.
Poor road design, cities’ bad traffic management practices (mis-timed or un-timed lights or green lights that are too long for low-traffic directions), and our society’s insistence on letting bad drivers drive all prevent us from doing the things on that list.