Gas Crisis?? What Gas Crisis
Sure, gas is just hitting $4 a gallon here in Northern Virginia (actually, I filled up for $3.79 yesterday) but I’m not that worried. Even with an SUV. I suspect things will be tight this summer, as speculators run rampant (blame the press) but as with everything market related the laws of supply and demand will hold true again and you can bet that price will begin to creep down as American’s conserve less and can justify, economically, more efficient vehicles.
Me, I’m gonna keep driving my 1996 Grand Cherokee. One, its paid for. Two, it only has 110,000 miles on it. And three, I boosted its fuel efficiency 20% this week, going from a paltry 18.5 mpg to 24.5 mpg - or about $15 per fill up. Now thats real money (and will help buy me some eggs and milk)
How? Well, Glen linked to this story on Fuel Efficiency tips and I simply took the first it to heart. I set the on board display to show current mileage and knowing I got about 18.5 mpg with it generally tried to drive at a pace that stayed above that.
Here’s the top 4 tips I followed:
1. Track Your Mileage in Real Time
2. Only Brake When You Have to
3. Always Stay Alert on the Road
4. Drive Like You’re on a Bike
It wasn’t too hard. A couple of things - I never went over 60 miles per hour (that seemed to be the magic threshold where mileage really dropped off. Thats ok, 60 is plenty fast where I was driving. I suspect on the highway, if I got up to cruising speeds, it would handle it too). I also slowed down slowly, trying to conserve momentum, and when I was at a traffic light, I accelerated slowly. Thats it. I didn’t even resort to the old standby of putting the car in neutral to coast down big hills.
I’ll try that next week.
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I didn’t do quite as well as you, but I boosted my 4WD from 16.5 to 18.5 with a ScanGauge II that plugs into the ODBII connector and reports MPG minute-by-minute. Still, 12% is nothing to sneeze at. A 10-12% across-the-nation MPG improvement would produce a big drop in gas prices as demand declined. For all the whining about $4/gallon I see most people still driving like gas is free.
Like you, I saw a big difference above 60; OD kicks in at 54, so driving 55-57 beats the heck out of 45-50.
Biggest thing that helped: looking deep. Crowd the center line so you can see brake lights 20 cars ahead, coast when you do, accelerate gently when clear, slow flow beats stop and go.
Comment by Homer — May 28, 2008 @ 6:30 pm
can I add:
#5. use cruise control as much as possible.
at least in my Jetta, using cruise control gets me an average of around 29MPG whereas not using brings me closer to 25mpg.
Comment by dave — May 28, 2008 @ 10:41 pm
For my 1993 (not so grand) Cherokee, w/140K on the odo, I switched up from a 235/70-16 (29in tire) to a 265/75-16 (32in tire). My 60mph rpm went from 2000 to 1700 and I got an increase of 5mpg (18mpg to 23mpg) for my 52 mile per day commute.
Seeing as how the price of the pushwater keeps increasing, I’ll probably be be trying the keeping it at or below 60mph thing in the not too distant future.
Comment by Phil — May 29, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
My old ‘95 6-cylinder F-150 was toast. In Feb we got a used ‘06 V-8 with only 22k on it - paid cash.
I can still stick the bike in the back.
I’m bad at math so I’ve never done the whole MPG thing with any assurance, but now I have electric windows, a second door(s) to keep groceries out of the rain, and a 6-speaker sound system now - and it’s a 4×4 without the big *!!4X4!!* stickers - very discreet.
Comment by DirtCrashr — June 2, 2008 @ 12:22 pm