Hypermiling at 80 mph

lnmcmahan · #1 03-31-2008, 05:00 PM

Yeah, well, that was the max speed, but the title sure sounds catchy!

We did the spring break tour of the Southwest, and as they say, we had a long way to go, and a short time to get there. What to do? I did not want to totally sacrifice fuel economy, but we were on a tight schedule.

Introducing the 80-60 P&G! (SL is 75 in AZ, so only 5 over on the top of the pulse!) ;-) On the first day on I5, I managed a 45mpg at an average speed of 66 MPH (both the SGII and the Garmin agreed). My incredibly good luck was that I had an 18 wheeler traveling almost the perfect speed, and I managed to draft him for over 200 miles. I didn't always have this to rely on. The result was good enough for the experiment that I immediately decided to continue it. The second day to Kingman I had to hurry too much and got my worst FE of the trip at just under 40 mpg. Suprisingly, the climb to the Grand Canyon and Indian Country gave me my best mpg at just over 46. I also had good MPG down to the Petrified Forest and Holbook at almost 44. Then coming west to Boulder City, I had to drive into a 35 MPH headwind naked. Needless to say, I only got 40.5. Then the last day home, we came through the Kelso dunes, to Bakerfield and back home. Having lots of up and downs and no good draft target, we came in just over 40 again.

Still, I managed to beat the EPA on a high speed vacation trip. Particulars:
2306 miles
54.319 gal
MPG 42.45 (109% of highway EPA! Woo Woo!!)
cost $187.71

bomber991 · #2 03-31-2008, 07:07 PM

Wow seems like you would slow down so quick from 80 to 60 that it wouldn't be worth it. But I guess it works. Shoot even doing 70 to 55 here in my car works better than just a constant 55mph speed but not by much at all.

savefuel · #3 07-12-2008, 03:36 PM

Just recently I rented a CHEVY MALIBU from ALAMO ANCHORAGE and cruised the Alaskan highways. As with that rental company, the first tank is free and we opted to return the vehicle as empty as possible. We weren't exactly hypermiling (didn't pull all the tricks) but by obeying the SL and riding the hills kinetically (as long as this was possible), we got 625 miles out of the 16 gallon tank before we pulled up to a gas station. The on board ECON meter came in handy and proved to be reliable. 100% city driving resulted in 27 mpg. Net HWY got us 44 mpg and overall was 40 mpg which wasn't bad for that size of vehicle.