I don't know if anybody is actually interested, but I wanted to give a quick update....

Back when nobody could get gas I started hypermiling to save gas. History is that the car is a 2014 with about 54K miles on it; lifetime the car's average mpg was 30 right on the nose.

That week when I couldn't get any gas I did a fairly extreme version of hypermiling, which involved not only driving more slowly, accelerating and decelerating slowly, and not running the AC, but I also turned the car off entirely at stop lights if i was going to sit there for any length of time. As some of you may recall, I got 38 mpg on that particular tank.


Here is the update part: Since that time, I have continued, but I have been doing a more relaxed version, just to see what I could get with a "reasonable" form of hypermiling. Still trying not to change speeds or brake, if possible (braking just turns gas money into heat!), but when it is hot i am running the AC, and I am not turning the car off at red lights. So, the answer is that I am getting 34 mpg using this milder form of hypermiling, and in just a few short weeks I have increased the lifetime mileage of the vehicle from 30 to 30.2.


You might think that 4 mpg is not that much of a difference and that it is probably not worth it, but the way I see it, essentially what I am doing is taking a 13.3% discount on gas. Gas prices are high and they will likely get higher. Say gas is at $3.50 a gallon, would you not want to buy it for $3.03? I would, and I am accomplishing the same thing by just changing my driving habits a little bit. As a bonus, I figure it is probably better for the environment, too.

Hypermiling is not for everybody, and I think it is unlikely that too many of you will change your driving habits one iota in response to this post, but I just wanted to let everybody know that sustained improvement of more than 10% in gas mileage is definitely doable.