Hypermiling: Save On Gas, Drive Like a Granny

"Hyper-what?"

It was a Tuesday morning and I'd just read that gas prices were going up again this spring. My stomach was curled up in a tight little ball, and I'd just written to a friend that I wasn't sure what we were going to do about the fairly regular road trips we take across the province and back, each month.

I had to Google hypermiling to find out what she was talking about. It turns out there are whole clubs full of people across the continent who play games with themselves, their vehicles, and sometimes each other, in order to wring the very best fuel economy they can out of their cars.

Now, I've always known that smarter driving can mean better bang for your buck in the fuel economy department, but I had absolutely NO idea just how much could be saved by following a few simple rules. I was skeptical, but I tried them, and I was floored: On my very first tank of gas trying this, I think I saved almost $30.
Hypermiliers have a number of tricks to help them pull off this near-magical feat on a regular basis:

• Inflate your tires to their maximum recommended pressure
• Use the lowest weight oil recommended for your car
• Change your air filter at least once a year
• Drive as if, hypothetically, you do not have brakes (loved this one)
• Don't use cruise control or worry about speed changes, instead focus on not changing the load on your engine

All of these tips come from this article about Wayne Gerdes, a record-holding hypermiler who can squeeze 84 miles per gallon from a Ford Ranger pickup truck: "He once averaged more than 100 mpg during the course of an entire summer. While behind the wheel of a hybrid electric Honda Insight, he coaxed the vehicle into yielding an astonishing 180.1 mpg."


Although some hypermilers take their efforts to the extreme by removing extra seats, and driving with the A/C off and the windows closed, even in the middle of summer, I wanted to speak with someone who was operating a little closer to my own reality. (I drive a 13-year-old car. Shifting into neutral, then back into gear makes me nervous that I might drop our transmission out somewhere between here and there, and removing the seats just isn't an option.)

Enter Jo Pavlov.

Jo's been driving "granny style," as she describes it, for almost five years now. She started doing it while on a continental road trip, driving a Dodge Grand Caravan. "Until that point in my life I had always driven tiny, subcompact cars. I never owned anything bigger than a four-cylinder."

She says in the days leading up to her trip, she realized that driving a van that averaged 11-12 liters per 100 kilometers would push her financial limits. "I started thinking, what I f I could get it to 10? What if I could get it to nine?"

She adds that getting a ScanGuage device that monitors fuel efficiency in real-time, was instrumental in helping her change her habits. "It was almost like a game to try and keep that average number as low as possible."

Before she started this, she says she was an average driver. In describing her habits, I swear she could've been describing my own: I'm no maniacal speed demon but I do drive virtually everywhere going about 10km above the limit; 20km above if I'm on the highway.

Today, Jo says today she goes the speed limit, even if it's fast (she drove across the Dakotas going 130km, which goes against conventional hypermiler wisdom, and still managed to pull 550-600km out of each tank), and she'll coast when possible if there's no one behind her to push the limit.

"I would just coast, take it really easy, learn patience, and learn to relax," she says. "I was never much of a speeder, but I was an average driver. I would say now that I'm a completely different driver."

In addition to underinflated tires, snow tires, and dirty air filters, she says stop and go traffic is another factor that is hard on fuel economy, no matter how hard you try to mitigate its effects.

Sure enough too, in conducting my own experiment, the only place I went faster than 110km was when I entered the city. Whether it was self-preservation or old habits taking over, I'm not sure. It was also the only place, en route, where I needed to work the gas pedal with any significance or zeal.


Next: My experiment in hypermiling.


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Kate McCaffery is a freelance writer, editor and former urbanite, now living somewhere in between the lake, the ski hill and some farmer's cow path. Visit mccaffery.ca/kate2.0/ for more information.