08FEH, you must have a very dry sense of humor asking for respect after your comments about Wayne....that's not an attack? Whatever it is, my remarks to you have been kinder....

Wayne has an elevated driveway, so it's not remotely like AHnuld Schwartzenegger heaving a Chevy Trailblazer down a mountain like Commando (1984 - even had the line "he's driving without brakes!!!" I may declare AHnuld the patron saint of hypermilers.) This is a residential area with very light traffic.

There was ample space at the end of the article with mainstream advice, but you willfully pretend it does not exist along with anything else that does not support your point of view.

Even if I never met Wayne, I would not be adding stuff to that article that does not exist like you do, then selectivly choose material.

About the near-collision: that happens to all of us all the time. I guarantee if everyone was alert like Wayne it would happen lot's less.

Even a mildly interested (read: mainstream) driver in fuel economy knows the dashboard or ScanGage is going to get an insanely high mpg figure while coasting...you show your ignorance by ridiculing it. Therefore, I suspect that fuel economy is something that is of little interest to you.

 

No problem:
I started with: http://news.google.com/ and got a similar list using http://news.yahoo.com/. Both search engines returning the same result.

I used "hybridfest" as the search term and sorted the articles by time:
Not finding much technical content, I checked the Hybridfest web site and came across one news report by ABC that at least had some technical content. I check CleanMPG and found lots of cars and faces but only two photos of Hobbit with 'real stuff'. I've also raised the same question in another forum, where is the technical stuff?

It doesn't take too many "hypermiler" articles to find the teasers, the extreme driving techniques. Sure, these techniques are disclaimed after they setup the image. For me, boring "efficient" is all I'm after along with hybrid technology improvements. It is the engineering and nothing else that interests me, which is why MPG vs MPH data is so important. Not to worry, I have no interest in how you generated your list.

Bob Wilson

 

Dead on, Bob, scientific or not. Personally, I want my car to work well, and efficiently. If I choose to focus on technique, great. If I want to hypermile, more power to me, done safely.

And I've got no beef with hypermilers, either - god bless. But some of the practices are questionable, and as more people start driving hybrids, they're going to look for techniques, and guess what they'll find along with the safe tips?

What I don't want is someone drafting trucks to pick up a couple MPG (you think a collision between one car and a truck can't cascade into a larger accident?), or rolling through stop signs because they think nobody's there, or bumping into me at a light because it didn't change when they expected it to while they were staring at their MPG display.

 

I'll give you credit for hunting down additional hypermiling articles, Bob.

If you listened much to interviews I had or Randy Burkhalter's, you are not going to find much about the edgier stuff that gets blown out of proportion by detractors.

I listened to Hobbit as he displayed the Prius transaxel and attempted to understand it (need to visit his site....). I'll be getting into the hardware myself as I plan to install MIMA (www.99mpg.com ) in my Insight.

Driving techinque matters, as does car design - it's not either or. My driving record since hypermiling has actually become safer, contrary to some accusations. (My aggressive driving: 4 collisions - My hypermiling: 0 collisions)

Cars are becoming more sophisticated every day, but why wait for one that drives by itself (if the day ever comes) ? People were putting desktop computers to good use in the pre-Mac early 1980's even though the ease of use was harder than it is today a quarter of a century later.

Dan and I were taking turns driving his Prius II about 1300 miles from Houston to Madison. It was my first extended and serious drive with one and was happy to average 60mph and get 60mpg doing it. Learned a lot....it will go hand in hand with some of the things Hobbit was discussing....

 

ok.

It's safe to say that after today I know a little more about Gerdes..., and you too Chuck.

Nice to meet ya!

Sean

 

One of the huge pitfalls of the whole hybrid thing is that people think they can just buy the technology and that will do it. They figure then they don't have to think too much and can just drive mindlessly as they always did and let the technology get the mileage for them. I see this every day in the Prii and the HCH's that whiz by me on the highway. Methods can make as much of a difference as the technology, and if people insist on driving hybrids at 75mph they won't get the full benefit from hybrids.

I bought a MT Insight new last summer. Just driving it gently at 55-60 returned about 75mpg, which I thought was pretty good. Over the winter I struggled to maintain 70mpg. I gradually adopted hypermiling techniques (at the time just to try to hang onto a 70mpg avg) and now am getting 90-100mpg consistently on my 68 mile daily commute (34 mi each way with two warmups). Last tank was 95 mpg (over >900 miles), and my best round trip is 101.2mpg. Others do better than that so I'm no star. Old highway EPA on the beast was 66mpg.

Better yet, these methods have carried over to the MT Subaru Outback I also drive, mostly locally but on some trips. Before I got the Insight it was netting 24-25mpg at speeds up to 80mph on my commutes. Last weekend running local errands I was amazed to get >31mpg, and have seen as much as 33.5mpg on a 130 mile trip from here to Boston. Have a trip tomorrow (with a boat on the roof) and am very curious to see what it can manage there. Old highway EPA on it was 27mpg, city 21.

What am I doing? Driving slower, speed limit on local roads, on the interstate 50-55 in the Insight and 50-60 in the Subaru. This took a bit of getting used to but there are effective methods for dealing with traffic coming up behind, so it's not the problem you might expect. Actually local roads are more of an issue. Subaru has more power so pulse&glide is more effective in it, but I vary the range so as not to annoy traffic behind me if any. I glide the Insight engine-off every chance I get, as I now have a relay that shuts off the injectors, leaving me with full electric steering and automatic engine startup if the brake vac drops too much. Traffic around me has no clue I'm gliding because I do it mostly on downhills. On gentler downhills I'll leave the engine on and ease up the throttle to garner some battery regen. I coast the Subaru in neutral engine-on whenever I can (hydraulic power assist steering) and when a safe worthwhile opportunity presents itself I'll glide engine-off - which really boosts mpg.

And all the usual stuff like minimizing acceleration and braking, timing lights, leaving a buffer ahead of me to absorb variations in traffic speed, turning engine off at long stops, etc. I never draft behind a truck (which is extremely boring anyway) because they go too fast, but sometimes I sidle over slightly towards the left lane as one goes by to suck a bit of their passing wind blast.

The guidance from people like Wayne is essential because they work out a menu of methods that you can gradually adopt (or not if you feel a method is unsafe), and because people like them convince people like me that improvements in mpg are possible via better driving technique. Basically they set the bar.

Driving like this is never boring for me yet is also far more relaxing than blitzing along at 80mph as I used to do.

Unfortunately journalists see it as some sort of bizarre behavior. If you think about it, what's bizarre is a whole nation of people driving en masse at 15-20mph over the speed limit on the highway and at least 10mph over on local roads, and police basically letting them do it because they can't ticket everybody! All the while distracted by jabbering on their cell phones, with some weaving and tailgating thrown in for good measure...

 

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the 'journalists'". - (Act IV, Scene II).

So, are you selling your Insight since hybrid technology isn't needed any more?

Bob Wilson

 

I don't think I said or even intimated that. The tendancy of most journalists to present anything unusual in that light is an amply documented fact of life.
I don't think I said or implied that either. Are you OK?

 

Hi,
It is a paraphrase of a famous quote from Shakespeare's Henry VI addressing a lament about "journalists [who rjw] present anything unusual." If it is factual, there is nothing wrong with what journalists write-up including extreme hypermiler driving.

Other than this summer cold going around, I'm doing OK. But it doesn't impact my appreciation of irony. For example, ". . . the huge pitfalls of the whole hybrid thing . . ." followed by assertions of the superiority of one driving style and blaming negative impressions on journalists.

Where do you think the journalists got their information about hypermiler driving including 'hopping out to push a car in the heat?' This was the perfect stunt to pull in front of someone who may wear a dress and high heels. About half of the article readers also wear the occasional dress and of the remaining, many wear suits, ties and office dress clothes.

I don't expect hypermiler advocates to appreciate the irony of owning and driving a hybrid but it still tickles my funny bone. Personally, I'd like to see a non-hybrid class at the next hybridfest along with a rule that the driver must be on the vehicle registration. This would provide a way to compare and contrast hybrid vs non-hybrid . . . or we can just use the EPA numbers.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob,

Why are you attacking lightfoot? He is merely saying some effort from the user is required to drive a car or for that matter, many other things in our daily life. The US leads the world in lawsuits because people that don't want to use things responsibly try to cash in, costing us all money.

In the past you dissed Dan Krouse because he was between hybrids - now you say the Insight is not a hybrid....you are starting to look like Pat Tillman's general who isn't very careful who he shoots at.

Question for you: why is it I got 60mpg on an Prius II at 60mph over 600miles on the interstate? I don't have you superior Prius knowledge and we all know the Prius is at it's worst on the highway. My driving techinques did not involve drafting, coasting in neutral, etc....it was all my use of the accelerator and observation of the MFD.

You have expressed profound contempt for lightfoot, myself and others...that's the only reason why I'm asking why with my limited Prius knowledge my first highway trip at least matches what you can do on a Prius I after it's pro-rated.

I also don't understand why you said you are disinterested in driving techniques, yet you dwell on discrediting hypermiling - which you say is nothing but driving techniques.

Stop the friendly fire, Bob.