I thought this was a great article, not sure if anyone's heard about this guy. My company did a TV show about him last year. It takes almost fanatical dedication, but maybe this is the best way to combat gas costs (a gallon of regular gas costs $4.67 here in Emeryville...yikes). I've started driving with my FCD on, it's interesting to see where I am wasting fuel the most.
"But it was driving his wife's Acura MDX that moved Wayne up to the next rung of hypermiler driving. That's because the SUV came with a fuel consumption display (FCD), which shows mpg in real time. As he drove, he began to see how little things—slight movements of his foot, accelerations up hills, even a cold day—influenced his fuel efficiency. He learned to wring as many as 638 miles from a single 19-gallon tank in the MDX; he rarely gets less than 30 mpg when he drives it."
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/01/king_of_the_hypermilers.html
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That is amazing driving! I guess the people behind him at a red light must be mad when he accelerates at a snail's pace! But good for him.
It's funny how the EPA fuel economy estimates are calculated. Apparently they are done by the car MANUFACTURERS themselves in their LAB (are their equipment and methods even validated?), and the EPA just reports the results (gotta love half-assed government oversight). They verify only 10-15% of those estimates in their own lab in Ann Arbor. So the automobiles for testing are in tip-top shape, with near-ideal tire pressure, tune up, ambient temperature, etc. Professionals (or maybe even computer controlled?) do the driving routines, so they rarely over-rev. Haha, the second link shows that the max acceleration during city/hwy testing is 3 MPH/sec, so 0-60 would take about 20 sec! I wonder if they even factor in air/road resistance, braking, turning, and such. No wonder why we can hardly ever reach their estimates during "normal, real" driving.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/how_tested.shtml
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fe_test_schedules.shtml
The Senate will hear arguments from various viewpoints today on whether speculation is in fact driving up energy futures. As we discussed in previous emails, the CFTC claim that they have seen no evidence that speculation is affecting prices. But an interesting factoid - since Bush took office, budget cuts have forced the CFTC to trim 20% of its workforce (GOP's attitude is the market will work itself out!), while commodities trading has increase 6X over that same time span. So we have fewer already-overworked and underpaid regulators overseeing a much larger trading volume with higher stakes. Also the NY and London energy markets are trying to work out an agreement for better oversight and transparency.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080617/oil_trading_speculation.html?.v=1
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As a (former) proud owner of a 2001 Honda Insight (61/68 EPA MPG) I can tell you that "hyper-miling" does work: I was able to get as much as 75MPG driving to/from San Jose using regular unleaded gas and nothing more than a very light foot. I should mention the fact that there is a large community of Insight owners on the internet (e.g. http://www.insightcentral.net/) who are able to garner as little as 50MPG and as much as 100MPG from the same model automobile; however, most drivers would not find the techniques used while "hyper-miling" to be practical on a day-to-day basis and would be better served by simply using cruise control (not available as a standard feature on the Honda Insight) and keepinig a well-maintained, fuel-efficient vehicle.
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