[elhigh]

In my experience, it is a smart strategy. Like your wife's car, the cruise on my Forester will overshoot on the decel, so I don't do that much - but clicking off the AC on some of the uphills has the notable effect of avoiding the torque converter unlocking, and sometimes even evading the tranny downshifting. The first-gen Forester's auto will unlock and downshift if you glare at it angrily, which drives me crazy - there's torque enough that that's just silly.

The downside is carpooling with Sweetie. When I'm doing all this, interacting with the car and its environment so as to maximize its fuel economy, Sweetie's lips get thinner and thinner, until finally: "Will - you - STOP - fiddling - with - all - the - danged - BUTTONS!"

And frankly, I have had to back off of that. I've got a couple of kids starting to drive, so I want them to pay much more attention on keeping lanes and not merging into other cars, and let them pick up ecodriving when their proficiency improves.