Hypermiling—maximizing gas mileage by making fuel-conserving adjustments to a vehicle and to driving techniques—was coined after the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Wayne Gerdes put together a toolkit of driving techniques designed to lessen North America’s reliance on foreign oil. And while perusing forum posts on hypermiling Web sites will still net a few people who extol the virtues for geopolitical reasons, environmental and economic benefits now motivate the majority.
“I was raised in Portugal. Vehicles are very small over there but they aren’t green per se,” said Manuel Santos, a Winnipeg-based hypermiler and moderator at Gerdes’ Web site, www.cleanmpg.com. “But there is a difference in what is believed to be adequate fuel economy over there versus here. In Europe a family sedan would probably be a compact here.”
Common hypermiling techniques involve driving no more than 80 km/h on the highway while never exceeding the speed limit elsewhere, coasting toward stoplights in the hope they will turn green before having to come to a complete stop and keeping the vehicle’s RPMs to a minimum.
The way society views automobiles needs to shift fundamentally, Santos said, although he understands actual hypermiling isn’t for everybody. “We (typically) look at automobiles from an ‘is it powerful?’ point of view…but that is not a sustainable way to look at the auto industry. Instead of thinking in a zero-to-60-miles-per-hour way we need to start thinking in a 60-miles-per-gallon way.”
He adds that the savings to your wallet can be just as exciting as driving fast and braking hard. The EnerGuide rating for a Toyota Prius is 3.7 L/100 km city and 4 L/100 km highway. Santos said getting 2.5 L/100 km is normal for him. To put this in perspective, a tank of gas driving Santos’ way would take a Prius 1,800km while the EnerGuide rating nets just a little more than 1,200km. At $1 per litre, that’s a savings of $15.
Carl Chaboyer, an employee at Gifford Automotive in Ottawa, said some customers are turning to hypermiling as a way of both saving money and “enjoying a hobby that doesn’t involve killing off the last 10 dodos.
“I don’t think the future is in the (Ford) F-150,” he said. “It’s only a very small number of our customers who have no regard for the ecology.” Hypermiling, he said, can be done in any vehicle, but unless there’s a pressing need to own a truck, it makes more sense to start with a vehicle that’s already fuel efficient.
“The trend we used to see was you would get your first car, probably a Corolla, then move into a Camry and maybe eventually a Lexus,” he said. “But now, some are just staying in their Corolla and asking us for tips on extending their fuel efficiency.”
Gifford experimented with putting nitrogen in customers’ tires to help increase fuel efficiency, as nitrogen decreases the loss of tire pressure. Chaboyer found this alone did not deliver significant fuel savings, although combined with other small steps it can add up.
Keith Hebert said even a few hypermiling techniques can save a trucking company millions of dollars. The Abbotsford, B.C., native drove his Smart car across Canada and back as part of the One Tonne Challenge awareness campaign around reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He averaged 100 miles per gallon.
One Tonne Challenge
Keith Hebert takes to the road  |
I started the 100 MPG Challenge in Victoria, B.C., with the goal of achieving 3.5 L/100 km (81 mpg) overall and to meet or beat 100 mpg on at least one tank of fuel. I beat 100 mpg on five occasions during the trip. |
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I always get asked “How much fits?” Well, now you know. Quite a bit. |
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Cruising through Jasper |
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Ottawa: This was the only station where I could get biodiesel in the whole country in 2005. |
But it was as a fuel analyst for a trucking company where his hypermiling tips helped save $2 million in annual fuel costs. “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” Hebert said. “The first thing we did was pull the current data from the truck drivers’ on-board computers. We looked at engine RPM, idling time and over-speed.”
Hebert then gave each driver a score and challenged them to beat it. By encouraging them to drive in a manner that kept engine RPMs lower and maintained highway speed at the limit or just below it, the fuel bill dropped five per cent in the first week.
What’s refreshing about Hebert’s approach is it’s firmly grounded in reality. “Clearly, when drivers have a (tight) schedule to meet they need to drive a certain speed to make the delivery on time,” he said. “But other times, there weren’t reasons they had to idle their truck or drive over the speed limit.”
Even on Hebert’s trip across the country he was realistic about what was possible. He said there were times when he would boot it to make an appointment and other times he didn’t maintain his optimum speed of 80 km/hr.
Efficiency modifications
Technique is only half the challenge, said ecomodder Darin Cosgrove.“Ecomodding is modifying a vehicle for greater efficiency. Some people like the technical challenge, some are concerned about the emissions and others, especially in the United States, want to reduce consumption for political reasons.”
Cosgrove and a partner are curators of www.ecomodder.com, which features instructions on wheel kilts (also called wheel skirts) which reduce wind resistance, and photos of aerocaps, covers mounted on pickups to improve aerodynamics.
Site users also obsess about redesigning their front grilles to limit the amount of wind allowed into the engine. Cosgrove said many have seen great success by partially blocking the opening.
Another popular modification is adding panels under the car. “There are all these little bits hanging below the car that wind gets caught up in,” he said. “Making the vehicle as aerodynamic as possible goes a long way to increasing fuel efficiency. Some auto manufacturers are actually starting to add smooth panels under the car for the same reason.”
Cosgrove has gone as far as to commit a holy sin in automotive modifications: he actually detuned his car. His Pontiac Firefly has a 55 horsepower engine but an economy model was offered in the United States that produced only 49 horsepower. By using some American parts, “I lowered the torque and the top-end speed of the car.”
Cosgrove said ecomodding attracts a lot of gearheads who tune their weekend sports car but are also looking for a fuel-efficient daily commuter. This combines the thrill of working on a car with the benefit of saving money on gas.
Despite fuel prices levelling off, ecomodding and hypermiling communities seem to be growing. While manufacturers introduce hybrid and other fuel-efficient models, there are lots of areas vehicle owners can tackle to improve their fuel economy. He points to a partial grille block that can open and close as the engine needs to be cooled. This could be implemented easily by manufacturers, but their slowness to move has been great for ecomodders.
“They’ve left a lot of low-hanging fruit,” Cosgrove said.
My week as a hypermiler
I’m not a particularly aggressive driver. I don’t gun the engine from red lights and I’m not usually found in the fast lane. But after speaking with a dozen hypermilers and ecomodders I wondered if it was really as easy as it sounded or if this is better left to obsessive compulsives.Manuel Santos told me hypermiling is like a diet. You start out with some simple techniques—like not eating fast food—and then move into more advanced techniques, like monitoring fibre intake and exercising more.
I decided to abandon fast food for a week behind the wheel of a 2010 Honda Ridgeline. Previously I averaged 14.6 L/100 km of mostly city driving, about a half litre over the EnerGuide rating.
The next week I implemented three techniques: I crept up to stop signs, accelerated from stops slowly to minimize engine RPMs, and I looked well ahead at lights and slowed if the red might turn green before I had to stop. I felt like I was being a safer driver and others didn’t seem to get annoyed at me.
And at the end of the week my efforts paid off. Final fuel usage: 9.5 L/100 km.
10 hypermiling tips
1 Clean the junk from your trunk. All that garbage adds unnecessary weight and decreases fuel efficiency.2 Remove that roof carrier. Sure they look great but they cost you money. Roof carriers can cut fuel efficiency by 10 per cent.
3 Track fuel consumption. Hypermilers and ecomodders recommend the Scangauge, which plugs into your car and provides instant feedback on fuel usage.
4 Pick up cargo on the way home. When you go shopping, pick up the heavy stuff on the way home and try to buy at (no kidding) places that are higher in elevation than your house, so when you drive home you’re travelling mostly downhill.
5 Stop stop-sign stop and crawl. Contrary to popular believe, hypermilers don’t advocate crawling through stop signs. They insist you stop, but you should coast up to that red octagon.
6 Don’t do drive-throughs. This promotes idling: using fuel and not going anywhere, a horrible use of gas.
7 Close the sunroof at higher speeds. Open sunroofs cause significant aerodynamic drag.
8 Find a blocker. Hypermilers find other, usually larger, vehicles travelling at slower speeds on the highway and caravan with them at a safe distance. Also, other drivers tend to get less mad at you for going 80 km/h on the highway when you’re behind a truck.
9 Make fuel economy a game. Track how much fuel you’re using and then try to beat it.
10 Take public transit.