I found out what's killing me. Slow-moving traffic is fine (it's easy to keep a huge following distance--on one leg I only had to stop twice). However, bumper-to-bumper ruins it for several reasons. One, the car loves to try to do "battery crawl" (which is exactly what I don't want). Two, huge following distances don't really help because if you're lucky the traffic moves three feet each time. Three, I always hit these areas with a low traction battery so the engine keeps turning on.
ARGH!
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