By Bob Difley
If you don’t think that adopting conservative driving habits can increase your mileage, consider a test that Ford recently conducted. They put a team together consisting of a NASCAR driver, an engineer, and a hyper-mileage record breaker to see how many miles they could wring out of a tank of gas in a stock Ford Fusion Hybrid. Driving on open roads they got–are your ready–1,445.7 miles out of one tank of gas. That works out to 81.5 mpg.
Now don’t expect to get those kinds of results driving your 40-foot diesel pusher or pulling your Grrand Teton fiver with four slides. But, they proved that you can stretch your mileage. And you can too, by taking a few tips from the team and applying some version of them to your driving.
- Slow down and maintain even pressure on the throttle
- Accelerate gradually, both from a stop and when entering a freeway
- Brake smoothly, avoiding fast stops
- Keep a safe distance between the vehicle in front of you
- Look ahead and anticipate traffic conditions. Slow down well before you need to
- Coast up to red lights and stop signs to avoid wasting fuel waste and wear on the brakes
- Minimize using heater and dash air conditioning to reduce the load on the engine
- Run roof air and close windows at high speeds to reduce aerodynamic drag
- Minimize excessive engine workload by using the vehicle’s kinetic forward motion to climb hills
- Use downhill momentum, rather than applying accelerator, to build speed back up
On a recent trip I had to rent a car for a week. My rented Prius had just over 6,000 miles on it and the monitor screen indicated that the car had averaged 41 miles per gallon up to that point. I thought it would be an interesting test to follow the monitor’s display of mileage that reflected on my driving at the time and, within reason–I was not trying to hyper-drive–adjust my driving speed, acceleration, and coasting to obtain higher mileage.
The tank lasted the entire week, and in fact had quite a bit left, even after a lot of tourist attraction and exploration driving. When I re-filled the tank, the car calculated my mileage for that tank of gas at 55 mph, a 34% increase. I was quite impressed, expecially in the feed back from the car itself as displayed on the monitor. I could easily see how my actions affected the mileage given the instant feedback.
For the last couple years I have managed to increase my mileage on my motorhome (while towing) from 7.2 to 8.8 mpg–a 22% increase–using similar methods of driving. But the Prius computer taught me some new things about my driving that I am now eager to test out on my rig. You too can obtain the same kind of mileage improvements–if you already haven’t. Start practicing now, so that when gas inevitably rises again you will be ready to display your middle digit to OPEC.