The proof is in the better gas mileage
Posted
Jun 17 2008, 09:51 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Nickel at FiveCentNickel altered his driving methods a bit and improved his gas mileage by 15%. Not impressed? That amounted to a savings of a little over 52 cents a gallon.
Still not impressed? This savvy personal-finance blogger paid with a cash rewards credit card that gives him a 5% discount on gas. "Thus, my base price was really $4.019 - 5% = $3.82. The 15% mileage boost then takes that down to the equivalent of $3.32 a gallon." When was the last time you paid that for gas?
Read his post to learn the methodology of his two-week experiment, but we'll give you a brief synopsis here. Nickel has a 2005 Honda CR-V 2WD, and usually gets 21.8 miles per gallon while driving in town. His gas mileage during the two weeks -- under the same driving conditions -- was 25.4 mpg.
He didn't even adopt extreme hypermiling measures. "I simply focused on accelerating gradually, anticipating stops and coasting where possible to minimize braking, and minimizing air conditioning usage whenever the outside temps permitted (though this didn't happen very often during the period in question)," he said.
He says he was a pretty conservative driver to start with. So, if you stop racing to and from stop signs, you'll save even more. He says, "While I would imagine that the results would vary pretty widely across makes/models, it seems that pretty much any 'typical' driver should be able to achieve a pretty nice gain."
