Joe Future : hypermiling, mpg

600 mile club!

JoeFuture — Wed, 30 May 2007 00:18:00 GMT

Woohoo! I hit 600.2 miles as I rolled into the gas station tonight after work. This is my first >600 mile tank, and according to the gas pump, I supposedly had almost 2 gallons left! So my next milestone will be 700 miles... once I work up the nerve, that is!

Extolling the virtues of the Honda Civic Hybrid

JoeFuture — Tue, 29 May 2007 16:53:00 GMT

As I mentioned previously, I have a sticker on my HCH-II with a simple message: 52mpg. Yes, it's partially there for bragging rights, and partially there to help people understand just what kind of great mileage you can achieve with this car.

Well this weekend, someone actually pulled up beside me at a red light and started asking all sorts of questions about the car after seeing the sticker! She was considering replacing her minivan with an HCH-II or a Prius. She told me she preferred the non-spaceship look of the HCH-II over the Prius (I agree). She was also fairly tall, 6ft, and asked how the headroom was. Being 6'1" myself, I was happy to tell her I had plenty of headroom. I can't say enough good things about this car, and it's great to get an opportunity to tell a perfect stranger how much I like it too!

Interestingly, on my current tank, I'm 563 miles into the tank at 55.2mpg! Looks like I'm going to have to get a new sticker! I'm hoping this is my first 600 mile tank, so keep your fingers crossed.

Hypermiling Update

JoeFuture — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:38:00 GMT

With a bit of a cold snap, some cruising around neighborhoods at low speeds, and rushing my wife to a doctor's appointment (lesson: always leave early), this tank wasn't as good as the last. I got 48.9mpg for 502.6 miles. Here's a snap of the dash just after I filled up, but before I had started the engine and reset the odometer.

It's a shame this one is blurry. If you squint, you'll see that for the first .5 miles of my new tank (from the gas station to work this morning), I'm getting 92.6 mpg :). I'm sure that will drop at least 40 mpg on the way home from work today, but it's fun to see. I tried hard, but I couldn't get it up to 99.9 to see if it would flip over.