How To: Improve Your Gas Mileage
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 06.19.06
TreeHugger prefers not to drive, but we know there are times and circumstances where you have to climb behind the wheel. For all of those times, there are a couple new projects out there to help us all keep the gas consumption low and efficiency high. LowCVP, the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, just finished up their "Low Carbon Road Transport Challenge," which called on policy and academic communities to contribute new or innovative proposals to enable the UK to accelerate the shift to low carbon vehicles and fuels and help meet climate change targets. One of the winning entries came from Associate Professor Steven Cousins at the School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science at Cranfield University, whose idea is to develop new instrumentation for cars that keeps track of carbon emissions and gas mileage, to better help drivers practice more efficient driving. The conclusion of the tests done by the Professor were this:
"The widespread adoption of ergonomically excellent vehicle instrumentation will improve the driver’s understanding of the costs and benefits of vehicle use, and has great potential to improve the choices we make. The evidence points to long-term changes in behaviour arising from time and money displays and more immediate responses to gear change indicators and the like."
This is interesting, but still at the theoretical level, for anyone who wasn't involved in the test, at least. Little did we know that such a device is already in wide use in Finland. Econen is a Finnish fuel consumption meter, which adapts to the way of driving and helps to drive more economically. In addition to the meter, Econen also offers a training program to improve driving efficiency and maximize the benefits of having the meter onboard. There has been a 15 percent reduction in fuel use and a four percent increase in productivity thanks to the smoother driving by users of Econen's meter. ::Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership and ::Econen via ::Hugg
my '04 MINI-Cooper S has a Realtime MPG readout, and a Mean MPG readout. With it I get about 30.9 MPG, not great, but the previous owner got around 24.5 MPG...and obviously didn't have the Realtime MPG readout engaged.
It would be better to have the computer help optimize my driving.
I have an 01 bmw and it also has a real time MPG gague and a resetable mpg readout. Having that makes a huge differnece in how I drive.
Also, I have looked into conversion to compressed natural gas or propane but have not found anyone in Texas that does it for personal vehicles. Does anyone know of any or about how much something like that costs?
My old BMW had an econometer that changed as you drove - the gauge was accurate but the scale was wrong (too generous).
I understand how these things can influence how you drive, but for every carefully driven 'econojourney', I would have another 'leadfoot-rinseout'. They might be able to make a 10% difference but it seems like a lot of similar green inventions assume you can live under ration conditions.
That's OK in the short term, but I doubt people can restrain themselves for long periods of time. Especially when car design devotes itself to giving the driver a feeling of effortless power.
I drove in Scandanavia for a while and it drove me mad! 55mph limit on the motorways and an absolute refusal to overtake on dead straight roads. You could go 15 miles without touching the brakes!
I'm uncomfortable with the real-time mpg readouts, my dad had one and depending on what the car was doing at any moment it could vary widely. I prefer the standard of miles per gallon calculated from "how many miles you do on a full tank just with your normal day to day driving".
I've just changed cars to a Smart Pulse, which depending on who you ask can get up to 85mpg. I'm sceptical of this, but I've only had it a fortnight and I'm still on my first tank of petrol.
In the mean time, I'm scouring Technorati for people mentioning what miles per gallon they're getting in their blogs. It would be really useful to get more real-world information here rather than that quote by the manufacturers or government testing
Thanks for the tips. It really is important to get more for your gallon of gas with the skyrocketing prices situation. And this would give you more distance as you go through road trips this summer.
where in the US can I buy one of these?
Keep an eye on your driving!
GasDandy is an easy-to-use tool that tracks a vehicle’s mileage and maintenance information, providing data that can be used for both business and personal purposes. By making these figures readily available, the program also gives the consumer the opportunity to save money and to proactively identify problems that can shorten the life of their vehicle(s). Download a free trial version of GasDandy today at http://www.gasdandy.com