[SentraSE-R]

Originally Posted by arcosine

Darrell, how do you get over 50 mpg driving a box shaped car?

Tony,

Mostly, I drive slow. As you can tell from my original post, cruise control at <35 mph is good for about 50 mpg in my box. Anything over 55 mph is like pushing a barn door into the wind. But I only get 40 mpg at 55 mph (it's more like 30 mpg at 70 mph), and half my miles are highway miles, so there's more to averaging nearly 49 mpg for >20,000 miles than just going slow.

Avoid stops. I live in the country, relatively speaking. I drive the frontage roads paralleling the freeways, and select routes with the fewest stops. I turn off my engine and coast 3 blocks to stops.

Pulse and glide. I pulse to 55 mph and coast back down to 30, or pulse to 40 mph and coast down to 25, or P&G between 30 and 20. When I accelerate, I try to keep the engine at the peak of its brake specific fuel consumption graph. When I glide, I usually do it engine-off at lower speeds. The big benefits to P&G come at slower speeds. My engine is on 25% of the time during a 25-40 mph P&G routine. It's only on 17% of the time during a 15-30 mph P&G, and it's on just 9% of the time during a 10-20 mph P&G regimen.

P&G has its benefits even at high speeds with the engine on. My last three tanks averaged 51.7 mpg, with 90% highway driving, and the engine on all of those highway miles.