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Under Gerdes' tutelage, my original score of 28 mpg driving on busy suburban streets in a 2007 Toyota Corolla shot up to 42 mpg hypermiling. (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=214054)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/506/Wayne_Filling_in_NY_City.jpgMarni Pyke - Daily Herald (Cook County) - July 3, 2008

The usual speeders comment their hypermiling hate -- Ed.

Drivers today are hyper-stressed, what with paying hyper-fuel prices and commuting amid hyper-traffic.

What the world needs now, Wayne Gerdes claims, is a little hypermiling.

The Wadsworth car czar is driven to save motorists from their gas-guzzling, carbon-emitting ways. He uses techniques that for most of us are counterintuitive, such as going easy on the gas pedal and driving slowly in the right lane
.… http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=214054

Wow...the comments really are remarkable, aren't they? The amount of angst on the internet never ceases to amaze me...it's like the road rage effect, only multiplied. I wonder if there's a causal relationship between the two, in fact...but I digress.

No matter what the "haters" say, it comes down to a simple argument. Their side is speculation, conjecture, assumption, and bias. Ours is (miles driven / gallons pumped). Ours can be plotted, charted, written down. You can point to a line item in your budget and say "See? I used to spend this on gas, but now I only spend this." This is not an emotional discussion. It's a rational one. We can't let their negative emotion affect us.

i registered, but can't see the comments.......

These hypermiling rants never cease to amaze me.

Can we stop pretending many of these comments are remotely rational discussions?
Do people that actually believe they are right screaming like this?

Daily, 45 are killed by speeders, another 35 by drunks...we have some distracted drivers emoting about an imaginary problem - show me the accident report on hypermilers.

Another point - you have to try some of these techniques before making a valid verdict...some of them are atypical of the way most drive. Every reporter trying hypermiling with Wayne in the car has made substiantial gains

Many of these posters also have a road rage problem - nothing strikes a nerve more than the possiblity that 90% of the drivers in ChicagoLand are going to stop going 10-15 over and going the limit....aggrressive drivers tailgate and roll thru stops all the time, and try to pass these transgressions on hypermilers.

I've ridden with Wayne plenty of times...I could have had him turned in easily...so could a number of reporters.

Problem is the real Wayne does not fit the rants of the speeders posting.

Check out www.cleanmpg.com if you are open to this.

i registered, but can't see the comments.......They are slighly different.

They have a "Read" link and "Post" link

Wow...I didn't even read the second page of comments...sorry about the unintentional plagiarism! :)

Nothing worse than a plagiarizing hypermiler, you know...

Man, these little cyber battles are becoming a daily occurrence. I wonder if it'd be a good idea to just copy/paste that AAA rebuttal in the comments section whenever these things pop up. Not that I don't like the battle. Heck, I'm a brave nomadic warrior of the political web already, but that way it'd keep the message consistent.

They are slighly different.

They have a "Read" link and "Post" link

both of them take me to the bottom and a box for posting comments. it tells me how many there are, but i can't access them. can you send me a link to the page you are seeing?

try

| read (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=214054#storycomments) | post (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=214054#comment)

Good job Wayne.

Very well done Wayne.

Below are my comments to the story:
I have met the man personally and can verify that he can, and does, get the mileage he says he does. He has shown me how to get over 60 mpg out of a '99 Saturn SL2 5-speed over the course of 700+ miles. My son, who is just 19 years old, has taken the same car to 890 miles and just over 73 mpg by using what he has learned from Wayne. When talking about cutting the engine, the key must be returned to the run position. This will allow all of the electronics to function as well as the ABS, airbags, etc. The brakes will continue to work for 3-5 pumps of the pedal. In fact, the brakes will never stop functioning even when the vacuum is depleted; they will just be a bit harder to push but will still have the same stopping power. As for damaging an automatic transmission, Wayne's Accord can be flat-towed(all 4 wheels on the ground) without damage. Also, 2002 and older Saturn cars can be flat-towed without damage. This is why in our area you see many Saturn's being towed behind RV's.

Anyone who has not tried the techniques they are so readily criticizing have no business doing so. My grandma always told me that I had to try a food first before I could say I didn't like it.

I think some of those crazier posts come from plain old internet trolls.
Some of them might not even be speeding roadragers. Perhaps don't even drive a car!

They just like to post off-the-wall or abusive comments just to get someone
upset enough that they will waste their time posting a long reply.

Trolls are people who are too dumb to write virus programs or
hack into other peoples PCs to commit vandalism. All they can
do is try to irritate people with their dumb comments.


My point is, things aren't as bad as they look. Internet trolls post a lot,
but are not representative of even 0.1% of PC users in general.

Xringer,

Maybe these flamers are the same losers that 2-3 years ago were pretending to be Hummer-owing rock stars on the net, deriding Prius owners as dirt poor, etc.

The more mainstream publicity the site gets the more freakshows will come out.

Wait, last I heard it was 180 mpg. Wayne must be on a continuous-improvement cycle with every meet he goes to.

Well, as for me I improved my average in-town mileage from a mere 27 mpg to slightly over 33 mpg. It's a small improvement and I'm sure if I aggressively pursued hypermiling - then I could break 35 mpg (in the Columbia metro area). But my car is old and already has 201k miles on it, so I don't want to demand too much from it. It has to drive me around another few years until I finish my master's degree.

this one was one of the best articles on hypermiling in recent weeks, even though it had some of the worst comments from people who don't even know what they are talking about.
but good job wayne, i think your results speak louder than any words.

Wait, last I heard it was 180 mpg. Wayne must be on a continuous-improvement cycle with every meet he goes to.

Well, as for me I improved my average in-town mileage from a mere 27 mpg to slightly over 33 mpg. It's a small improvement and I'm sure if I aggressively pursued hypermiling - then I could break 35 mpg (in the Columbia metro area). But my car is old and already has 201k miles on it, so I don't want to demand too much from it. It has to drive me around another few years until I finish my master's degree.

You may find that your mileage keeps creeping up without adding new techniques. Probably because you get better at the ones you are using. That certainly happened for me. I definitely got smoother, too.

try

| read (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=214054#storycomments) | post (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=214054#comment)

thanks, chuck. i finally switched from safari to firefox and now it works.

I'm sure with every single article (regardless good or bad), more people will be attracted to this site and these techniques. Those spewing the irrational hate on those blogs should be mad at Big Oil (and the governent that allows it to run amok...Valdez ruling anyone?) and that salesman who put them in that FSP (that they now cannot get rid of), but cannot bring themselve to think that they are, in part, responsible for their predicament. Therefore they project on to the poor hypermiler their anger. There will be a silent revolution, leaving only those who inch along in the right hand lane. We will be magnanimous enough to pick up the guy who ran out of gas in his Hummer, but we will not lend him the $10 it takes to buy a gallon of gas.

The typical hate from commenters shows why CAFE standards are necessary. Far too many people are clueless to make rational choices. It's truly pathetic how the typical American considers it his God-given right to drain the Ghawar.

Harry

These people who criticize Hypermilers do so because they have nothing better to do.
It's easier to go with the perceived flow of opinion than be a rebel and do something different. I have said before on different posts where others have criticizing other peoples choices. It's their wallets paying for the gas not mine so I really don't care how they drive or what they drive.
I look at my average gas mileage and to many it isn't much better than EPA compared to others on this board but to me it is much better. My average tank I'm getting over 22 mpg and I'm thrilled since during the summer I usually get around 19 to 19.5 mpg.
My average since joining this board is 15% better than normal. That's 40 more miles out of a tank or 2 gallons. That is 52 gallons saved a year or $215 in my DD.
If the average driver in the U.S. improved their gas mileage as little as I with my DD we would have $2.50 gas by Halloween.

Who is that Wayne Gerdes they talk about ? ;)

PM

Great article Wayne. Lately, Hypermile articles seem to be more balanced, and I think that is the payoff for all the hard work that has been done to get information to the News Media.

Hypermiling is extremely hot right now, and it seems to have legs. Many more people are interested, even the Japanese.

I apologize for hijacking the comments to your most recent article. Just too much misinformation being posted by folks who simply pass on the bogus stuff from site to site.

Wait, last I heard it was 180 mpg. Wayne must be on a continuous-improvement cycle with every meet he goes to.

He got the new record at the WFEC held at my house a couple of weeks ago. He's a machine! He also got 139 mpg out of my Prius on my roads. The course was 16+ miles long for both the Insight and the Prius.

Keep up the great work, Wayne. As for the AAA comments: Hypermiling in the hands of competant people is quite safe. The operative word being "competant." There are a lot of people on the roads today which I wouldn't want to get in the way of on a FAS if they were hypermiling. And they're the same idiots who are driving like same currently.
brian

Don't let the comments get you down - only the haters will post. Most sensible people won't bother with the effort.

In my experience, you can't talk people into this. All you can do is show them the way. When they are ready, and not until then, will they come around. And that will be based on the price of gas, and what they can afford.

This all began with people much smarter than me who saw OIL for what it was, the true costs of OIL, and what it was to become. Gas prices hit $3/gal and some more people found there way here. Gas prices hit $4/gal and a whole bunch of people found there way here, including the media. The media loves to pretend to tell both sides, instead of telling the truth, so we'll have to live with the lies for a while.

The truth will come out on its own as prices rise.

Wait, last I heard it was 180 mpg. Wayne must be on a continuous-improvement cycle with every meet he goes to.

Hi--

Here is Wayne getting 1.1L/100km (213.8 MPG) on the course:

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/medium/P1020034.JPG

And to think I thought I did good with 1.5L/100km (156.8 MPG) :eek: