The Hypermiling Trial

I was reading my ESPN the Magazine this week and they had an article about Carl Edwards and how he used different techniques to squeeze mpg's. This may be helpful as gas prices start to increase again, so I thought I'd give it a try. Basically in the article Carl and another guy are driving around and the one guy gets the car to stay above 60 mpg for the duration of their trip. Now I don't care if the trip was only 5 minutes, to do that over any period of time is impressive. Especially since it wasn't a souped car or anything (other than you know it being Carl Edward's Car) it was a Ford Focus. So nothing really stand out there, but the guy was able to essentially double the gas mileage just by driving the right way. Now I knew it was possible to stretch gas mileage some by driving technique but 25 mpgs!! That's crazy! So I did a little experiment today on the way home from Mom's and just using the little mpg indicator I was able to get over 25 mpg's. I lost a little in town when I got home, but overall I was impressed. My new goal is to get 30. I'll probably have to do it on the way home though as we are always running a little late Sunday morning and hypermiling doesn't exactly lend itself to setting land speed records. Anyway this week I am going to fill up Monday and see what I can do just on my way to work. I was able to get the Dodge Caravan up to about 27 mpg on Rt. 7 so I'm thinking I can get at least 35 maybe even 40 if I really pay attention. I'll let you know.