Hypermiling For the Win!

April 22, 2015

I have been playing with hypermiling (the idea that how we drive affects our gas milage) for a few years now, and I find it very entertaining. I mostly enjoy the reactions I get from people both on and off the road when I’m doing it. But today’s reaction was perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. But before I tell that story, let me explain what I do, and to a certain extent, what hypermiling is. When I drive I try to get the best mileage out of my car as I can. And to do so I have a number of driving habits that are different from other drivers on the road, including:

I don’t accelerate quickly. I try to keep my tachometer to below 2.5 or 3 if on a steep hill. I really want to keep it around 2 or lower, but the engine of my car is such that it doesn’t increase in speed much at 2.
When I accelerate, I only go up to around 45-55 miles per hour. I’ve found that my car keeps those speeds fairly well with very little application of the throttle, so I use less gas.
I tend to slow down when approaching signals, even if they are green. I’d rather not be adding gas to the engine if I’m going to have to stop anyway. I don’t brake, I just don’t accelerate.
I coast down hills. This is awesome in areas near where I live as the hills are spectacular with long straight roads going down them. I get a huge rush from both the speed and the fact that I’m using very little gas as my foot is completely off the accelerator. I do keep the car in gear while I’m doing this, and my foot is usually on or near the brake to slow down at the bottom.
I try to stay calm and relaxed. I believe I get more aggressive when I’m angry, and this results in faster driving, which reduces the mileage. So I try hard to see the humor in most situations and stay relaxed and calm.

I’ve found that most of these techniques seem to anger other people sharing the road with me, especially when I don’t get up to (or past) the speed limit in three seconds or less. I am used to being tailgated, honked at, and even yelled at or flipped off. When I was talking to my brother about hypermiling, he yelled, “don’t you drive like that in front of me!” and we weren’t even in a car! So today, I was driving to school in my typical slow fashion. I was on a portion of a highway with two lanes of oncoming traffic and one lane in my direction. There was a huge Chevy truck in my rearview, attempting unsuccessfully to push my speed up to 55mph or faster. I was monitoring my speed and verifying that the Chevy wasn’t going to hit me when a big black truck, probably a Ford F250, came roaring around us both. He floored it, entered into oncoming traffic lanes (he had the space) and roared around both the angry Chevy and me. I couldn’t see the Chevy driver’s face, but I’m sure he was even angrier at that. Not only was he stuck behind this crazy snail of a driver in a wimpy VW, but then he got passed himself! When I finally pulled into the left turn lane to get off the highway, he roared past me like he was coming out of the starting gates. And the real irony? The black truck never did get that far ahead of me. When I entered the left turn lane, he was only just going through that same intersection. But I’m sure his manliness was not in question.