Vetter Challenge Advice.

[JeffM]

Originally Posted by sheepdog 44

News of the world of motorcycling > Vetter Fuel Economy Challenge tests fuel mileage limits

Alan Smith, an accomplished hypermiler from California, took the overall victory in the 2014 Craig Vetter Fuel Economy Challenge, achieving 181.6 mpg at a cost of 1.57 cents per mile.

Congratulations Alan!!!

[sendler]

Must have been a crazy tail wind on the highway leg for Alan's streamliner to improve from 133 mpgUS last year with no changes to the bike.
.
Maybe he has been reading Ecomodder to learn some "tricky riding".

[JeffM]

Originally Posted by sendler

Must have been a crazy tail wind on the highway leg for Alan's streamliner to improve from 133 mpgUS last year with no changes to the bike.
.
Maybe he has been reading Ecomodder to learn some "tricky riding".

Alan mentioned to me that the weather and road conditions were pretty ideal for the competition. Calm winds, gentle rolling roads, and only about 10 miles of freeway at 70-75 mph. The competition in Wendover, NV will be different with higher altitude, most likely winds, and higher speeds so I'm sure everyone's mileage will suffer somewhat.

Alan said that Craig Vetter will be adding the Ohio competition to his web page. www.craigvetter.com

Jeff

[sendler]

This is the same Ohio course as it has been for the last three years. He is usually around 130 mpgUS on this course and logs 90's on trips.

[Grant-53]

The full results are posted on craigvetter.com. Congratulations to Alan and the rest of the riders. Wish Carol Vetter a happy birthday too.

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by Grant-53

The full results are posted on craigvetter.com. Congratulations to Alan and the rest of the riders. Wish Carol Vetter a happy birthday too.

Linky: 2014 Craig Vetter Fuel Economy Challenge, Vintage Days

[sendler]

I'm actually figuring 201 mpge for the Illuminati and a whopping 385 mpge for the streamlined Zero electric motorcycle. The interesting thing this shows, gas in the USA is really cheap compared to electricity. they figured $0.12 / kWhr but I actually pay $0.16 so a Nissan Leaf will cost $5.44 to go 100 miles. The same as a 58 mpgUS Prius. The Honda CTX700 showed an excellent 101.8 mpgUS which is right up there with my CBR250R and a lot bigger and more powerful.

[NeilBlanchard]

2014 Craig Vetter Fuel Economy Challenge, Vintage Days

The Illuminati Motor Works '7' would have placed 4th overall. That says a lot!

[gregsfc]

It was ideal for riding and getting great fuel economy from a weather standpoint, but I still can't figure out why some got such great numbers, including myself. There was really quite a bit of stop-and go through towns, rolling hills with consistent speeds when we were out in the open, which means, down the hills we were engine braking and not tucking (only Fred and myself tucked from what I saw, but were tucked less than 50% of the ride).

Yes the riders stay tight but no where near to the point of drafting or not having clean air. There was almost no wind, and it was round trip, so there could not have been one of those one-direction, tail wind anomalies, and some of the rides came in about what one would expect, e.g. Vic, and the Vespa scooter and the DR200 and the 500 Ascot. Everyone else though, did very, very well. Better than it seems for real-world conditions, but believe me, it was real world. Traffic sometimes kept us below the speed limit, but the slow goers that we got behind occasionally did that speed up and slow down variation thing, so I don't see how that put some of us over the top. If slow-fast-slow-fast was the key, then why didn't I do that well on charity rides that were actually slower than this ride.

The only difference for me than my back home trips was the tucking, but for Allan, Fred, Craig, and me, it had to be considerably better than normal, and I'm not sure why. When I got over to the hotel that morning, I was worried about it still being a little cool, because the Honda 670 Parallel does not do well mpg wise in cool weather. Fred says it's because it runs so lean and that Honda must not accounted for that for cold weather. Anyway, I pumped up my tire pressure to 40 and did a little ride before fueling up. I knew that some would be right on time and have warm engines at the start. I didn't want to be at a disadvantage, so I made sure mine was warm too. By the time we started though, it had warmed considerably.

I'm not sure what drove our numbers so high. Craig said it was the first time that he got 100 or better. I've found, by comparing my trip meter a couple of times versus a GPS, that my trip meter is about 2.3% optimistic, and so, using my own calculations, I came up with about 97 mpg for my ride, which is about 13 mpg better than my all-time high, and I'm ethanol free back home. But the leaders decided to go with a higher trip distance based on an average or something like that, and that drove my number, as well as everyone else's number a little higher, but is still close and still works for a comparison basis, however I'm not sure why they don't run a few GPSs and take the median of those instead of vehicle trip meters.

Professor Golf, who has a similar box as mine directly behind his seat on his Zero stated that he thought that my box helped my number, but I ride with this box back home. But maybe the box, in conjunction with tucking, is what put me so far out of my normal mpg.

A few minor issues I'd like to complain about in a respectful way. The stock diesel was DNF, but it still got listed up there with the contenders. I think that it should have been in the middle list with the nobodies like myself who couldn't hold the groceries. Sure, it was getting in the 130s when it went kaput, but it didn't finish, and that should be at least a big of a penalty as not being able to carry groceries in a specific way. It was stated before the competition that the only alternative-fuel vehicle was the stock diesel; nothing about the streamlined diesel, yet Fred was declared winner of the alternative-fuel class. Craig stated that the car would have finished 4th, but they count differently than I do. If you look at the list. Out of all the vehicles that could carry the groceries and that also finished, the car is 3rd best; not 4th.

[gregsfc]

I looked at my electric bill. It's 10.5 cents per KWh using TVA power. We do a little better down here, but I think that cheap gas has always been the reason we can't get past it.

One thing that the Ilumini 7 guy stated that still worries me about battery-powered vehicles. To paraphrase, he said that when the batteries were new, the car could have gone nearly 200 miles in our kind of ride, but now that they're 5 years old, our ride was near the limit. They could have made it to about 160 he said. So if Li Ion battery replacements at five years is something like $1K, this wouldn't be a big deal, but costs being what they are to replace car batteries being more than the value of a 5-year-old electric car--now that's a problem! And to be forced between a choice of substantial reduction in range capability or spending thousands and thousands for batteries, I think we're still going to be stuck on petroleum-based fuels for a while longer.