I took it upon myself to increase my good stewardship of our nation's resources by attempting to become somewhat of a hypermiler. My commute is around 47 miles one way and, in the past, I have had to refuel about every 2.5 days. I stopped using my air conditioner and rolled down the windows and now refuel every 4 days. Various of my friends and family have asked me what my actual gas mileage is and I haven't had an answer so with my last fillup (previous to this morning's) I undertook finding out. At my fillup this morning I got 9.1 gallons of gas and had traveled 387.6 miles on that, which equates to about 42.5 miles per gallon and I rounded up to 43 miles per gallon.
Not bad for my little Kia Rio. The old saw about the drag created by traveling with rolled down windows is my next experiment. With this tank of gas I will leave the windows rolled up and use the A/C when necessary. I didn't this morning because it is in the upper 60's and it feels really nice with the cool air blowing through windows. I will keep you informed.
Not that too many people are interested but when has that ever stopped me? :)
5 comments:
i've tried this a little bit, and i need to do it more. good research, well done!
yes, I tell myself it's for the good of mankind :)
I've heard from both sides. Someone insisted that the A/C was the way to go, but when I asked my mechanic friend, he said the A/C pulled more from the engine than the drag from rolling down the windows. For me it's more about thawing out from A/C buildings. ;-)
Well done! I've been trying (in addition to the other things I mentioned over on my blog) to keep the windows up AND not use the A/C. The fan by itself is OK, but the summer is just getting started here in L.A., so I may not be able to keep that up for much longer.
KP - It's high (humid) summer here so keeping the windows up is not an option...at least not for me. I did try it this morning while it was relatively cool but it became quite uncomfortable after 10 minutes. Good luck with your own highly scientific experiment!
T - I'm now inclined to agree with your mechanic. Today I'm about 90 miles into the current tank of gas and the needle is at the mark that last week took me about 120 or 130 miles...we shall see when it's all said and done and I will faithfully log the results!
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