Tip of the Day - Hypermiling to beat terrorists
I read an article in Mother Jones that I can't stop thinking about. It talks about the king of the "hypermilers," a guy named Wayne Gerdes, who can get 60 mpg in a regular Honda Accord. The part that stuck with me is where he says he was like anyone else before 9/11. Here's how that changed him:
"Wayne's driving obsession began after 9/11...
Before then, he drove "75 miles per hour in the left-hand lane," but in the wake of the attacks he vowed to minimize his personal consumption of Mideast oil. As he sees it, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda received their operating funds from all the U.S. consumers who bought Saudi oil. That money paid for the construction work that made bin Laden's family rich. "If Osama bin Laden didn't have the money to burn," Wayne says, "he wouldn't have been able to do what he did. There was a direct relationship between our addiction to oil and the World Trade Center coming down."
This picture is of Felix Kramer, the founder of Calcars.org who uses technology to help him hypermile. He gets 100+ mpg in a 2004 Toyota Prius modified to a plug in hybrid.
I'm driving to Phoenix today and thought I'd see what kind of mileage I can get in our 2007 Nissan Versa. Anyone out there have any favorite hypermiling techniques?
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- Philip Reed January 16, 2007, 8:59 AM
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I'm not a hypermiler but I avoid jackrabbit starts and try to hit the lights. I watch the pedestrian signals when available to try to gauge how best to make it through an intersection without hitting the red light. I need to check my tire pressures too.
Steve: I think techniques like the ones you mentioned really help your gas mileage. If you think of it, when you hit the brakes, you're converting energy into heat. A little planning goes a long way.