Hypermiling update
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.
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust