Quote:
Originally Posted by bluejoey
I don't have one yet. I might get an Ultragauge for Xmas. In the meantime, I've been tracking tank to tank and begun to watch needle points carefully and take notes to get within tank feedback as well as between.
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You'll learn once you get one that there's so much more there than knowing in advance what your MPG is going to be. You'll learn that some days you can get 28mpg in an uphill stretch that you usually get 24mpg, then notice that you're 80' behind a large box truck, far enough back to be save, but close enough to be in the disrupted airflow. You'll learn that when you're cruising along on what seems like level ground where you should be getting 35mpg, you're getting 31mpg. You'll lift your foot just a fraction of a millimeter and your mpg will go up to 39mpg and a smile will come across your face (and you'll ignore the fact that your speed dropped from 66mph to 63mph). You'll find that there's parts of your drive that look flat, but in one direction you can get 40mpg and in the other direction you get 33mpg and from that information you'll learn that you can do a neutral glide for 25-30 seconds.
Instrumentation just changes the way you drive. It becomes a game. I was dreading the fact that my commute grew by roughly 20 minutes this year, but now that I've discovered hypermiling, I look forward to it every day. And the payback is $75/month in fuel savings despite an extra 10-12 miles round trip.